There was the usual dreaminess, I suppose. Also a shyness that caused me - and others - to notice that I could express myself better by writing than by speaking. This is typical of many writers, I think. What is a drawback in childhood is an asset to a literary life. Not being fluent on one’s feet sends one to the page and a habit is born.
There's two identity markers I'm sure of, and one is, I'm Jewish. And the other is, I'm a writer. There's just no arguing with either thing. I'm just Jewish.
I did not think that I was angry, but clearly anger was reflected in my writing. I did not think that I had been affected emotionally, but it was clear from my writing that I was still very emotional about the trial some six months after it ended.
My thinking process starts with my pen.
When I go back and read my journals or fiction, I am always surprised. I may not remember having those thoughts, but they still exist and I know they are mine, and it's all part of making sense of who I am.
Novel-writing is the only place where someone who would have liked to do anything can still do that vicariously.
The things worth writing about, and the things worth reading about, are the things that feel almost beyond description at the start and are, because of that, frightening.
When you're a writer and something difficult happens to you, one of the things involved in that is this emergence of narrative potential. And there's then a kind of self-consciousness about telling a story in which you suffered.
I tend not to think about the reading public at all, or the business, when I'm writing.
The writing that feels the best to me, I experience sometimes, is a kind of weirdly deep listening - like, it feels like if you just listen hard enough, the next sentence will tell you what it needs to be.
I have long observed that the act of writing is viewed, by some, as an elite and otherworldly act, all the more so if a person isn't paid for what she writes.
I started to write things down, as a very young child, wanting to find a way to remember - to keep close, somehow - moments that made an impression on me.
I think we have a great deal of mythology around writing. We believe that only a few people can really do it. I wrote a book called 'The Right to Write.' In it, I argued that all of us have the capacity to write. That it's as normal to write as it is to speak.
I love working on a typewriter - the rhythm, the sound; it's like playing the piano, which I do, too.
What is writing but an expression of my own life?
