Amy Bloom

Keep your mouth shut and see what's happening around you. Don't finish people's sentences for them. Don't just hear what they say, but also how they behave while they're saying it. That was great training for writing. ”

I find the 1940s very compelling. It is a very excitable period in the U.S. when, whether out of necessity or not, everybody was reinventing themselves. ”

I assume as a writer that most of the time I'm going to fall down and fail. ”

I think all writers are mainly writing for themselves because I believe that most writers are writing based on a need to write. But at the same time, I feel that writers are, of course, writing for their readers, too. ”

I am interested in struggle - between our hearts and our head, between principle and desire - and one of those struggles is with mortality; and no one at all is immune to it, which makes it even more interesting to me. Some people fall in love, some don't. Some sky dive, some don't. Everyone who lives, ages. ”

My writing process, such as it is, consists of a lot of noodling, procrastinating, dawdling, and avoiding. ”

Nonfiction is both easier and harder to write than fiction. It's easier because the facts are already laid out before you, and there is already a narrative arc. What makes it harder is that you are not free to use your imagination and creativity to fill in any missing gaps within the story. ”

Normal' is not clinical, it's not autobiographical, and I don't claim to be objective. It's strictly my perceptions and thoughts about the people that I met and the stories that I heard. It was never meant to be an academic work. ”

I do my business in the morning, and then at 2 P.M., I write fiction for the rest of the day. I like my husband, so I don't work at weekends. ”

I've written the best work I know how. And I'm appreciative of the people who read it and care about the work - and that's pretty much the end of that. ”