The fiction writer in me likes gaps in stories because I can jump into that gap and try to suggest something.

I'm not a writer on a mission, and I'm very suspicious of writers on missions, but I'm also not living a false life.

If your depiction of loss doesn't make the reader feel loss, then you didn't depict it right.

Not every gay person recites poetry or has read Keats. You can get readers through anything if the characters are complicated. You can't dismiss Josey Wales' quite liberal worldview.