In [writing] fiction, every sentence is its own reward.
I'm probably more interested in sentences than anything else in life.
I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.
The thing that most interests me about writing - there are lots of things, but the thing I can't do without - is the hit of happiness a lovely sentence delivers.
I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.
I write, fighting for every sentence, fighting to hold the reader with every paragraph.
Working at the 'Review', if anything, the impression you got was, 'I'll never be good enough. I'll never work hard enough. I'll never be devoted enough.' These people are staying up all night over their sentences!
What I have in advance are people I want to write about and a problem or problems that I see those people encountering and that I want to explore - it all proceeds sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and scene by scene.
When I close my eyes and think of a writer, I don't imagine him or her as someone who is sitting above me on a pedestal, blindfolded, holding the scales of justice in one hand! No, I see sentences.
