I lost many literary battles the day I read 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' I had to concede that occasionally aphorisms have their power. I had to give up the idea that Keats had a monopoly on the lyrical.
Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.
English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life.
Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
Women often have a great need to portray themselves as sympathetic and pleasing, but we're also dark people with dark thoughts.
All my books are made up of other books. They're all deeply structured on other fiction, because I was a student in fiction and I didn't have much actual living to draw on. I suspect a lot of other people's novels are like that, too, though they might be slower to talk about it.
