We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think..

I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts..

Every once in a while someone says, 'You can't really learn anything, if you're really a writer then you wouldn't need to do it.' But I think what pe….

Somehow we have to detach from feeling as though money is a quick and easy standard by which we can gauge how well we're doing..

I don't really like to tell people to get out drugs..

I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!.

When I've taught writing to five, six, and seven year olds, it's not very different than talking to an adult writer. They're writers then, and when t….

There is a lot of censorship about writing that's exerted from all directions, from families or governments and society, even the fear of being offen….

I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it..

I think you have to remember that writing is hard; my first editor used to say that to me..

There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too..

In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school..

I find that I get very excited about what my students are up to and that I get to be the hurdle they need to jump over..

Censorship is all around us, I don't think it's innate..

Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older..

You may be somebody who writes best for a small press that doesn't pay very well, but you might have a fascinating and intricate style that might not….

There are so many different ways, most of them helpful and legal, to get yourself into a state of mind where writing is possible. It's going to be di….

Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long ….

I'm very secretive. I'll write a whole novel and revise it, which might take me two years or more, and the people I know best don't know what I'm wri….

We have to diversify, we have to find work we can do that helps other people while helping ourselves, work that has to do with writing that isn't nec….

The main thing is to explain to yourself that everybody suffers..