Writing is always a restorative process. It's like paddling a kayak. When you're writing, you can't do anything else. You're in the space you're in. So, in that way, it's enormously centering and restorative.

Writing is only the frosting on my cake. I'm whole without it.

Places are extremely important when writing a long story because place shapes a character.

In literature, the ghost is almost always a metaphor for the weight of the past. I don't believe in them in the traditional sense.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

I gradually realized that I was seeing another example of creative ebb, another step by another art on the road that may indeed end in extinction.