"I am a very linear thinker, so I write beginning to end. I write hundreds of pages per book that never make it into print."

"I feel that if you are blessed, or lucky enough, to be doing well, you should help others."

"It was just you had to be strong, and if you weren't strong you're a victim and you're not going to make it. That was the reality when I was growing up."

"I'm more influenced by my own interests than anyone else's. Writers have to entertain themselves, or they can't entertain anyone else."

"I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design."

"I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not."

"The more poetry you have in the head, the more poetry you will understand because you will be getting to the roots of what it is that makes people write poetry at all."

"I write my novels longhand. I love the feeling of writing; I love to see pen on paper. It feels more creative than typing, and it's a more visual process for me - I can picture the entire scene in my head and am merely writing what I see."