It's never that hard for me to imagine what it must feel like to be someone else, whether it's an American teenage girl or a Japanese octogenarian man.

I just think that people are complicated, both men and women. It happens that I write more about women.

I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors.

For 'Gender Studies,' I wrote that story in May and June of 2016. People have said to me, 'Oh, it's a political allegory,' and I think, 'Sure.' The political stuff is definitely there. But that's why I like fiction; there can be lots of different things going on, and it's all intertwined, and you can't separate out what's in what category.

The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.

What distinguishes a great mnemonist, I learned, is the ability to create lavish images on the fly, to paint in the mind a scene so unlike any other it cannot be forgotten. And to do it quickly. Many competitive mnemonists argue that their skills are less a feat of memory than of creativity.

You are indebted to you imagination for three-fourths of your importance.

The writer must be a participant in the scene... like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.