King is probably one of three men of this century that I'll call heroic. A fantastic man as far as I'm concerned, for all that he did. - Ernest J. Gaines

All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.

In dialogue, I’m dealing with the sounds I’ve heard. One of the reasons I often write from first person or multiple points of view is to hear the voices of different characters. Omniscient narration becomes a problem because, for me, the omniscient is my own voice narrating the story and then bringing in characters for dialogue.

When people hear stories, they identify more closely with the characters. When I read aloud, people always come up to me and say, “I understand it much better now that I’ve heard you read it. I can hear the characters’ voices much clearer…”