The art of living your life has a lot to do with getting over loss. The less the past haunts you, the better.

For a writer, children make life needlessly hard. I've muddled through a lot of things, but I have not muddled through my writing life. I work absolutely flat out, giving it my all.

I'm an equal opportunity reader - although I don't much read plays. And since I was raised a Presbyterian, pretty much all pleasures are guilty.

That said, being dyslexic, I wasn't a great reader when I was kid.

I haven't scoured Dixie out of my voice. But I don't think that the books that I have written... have really in any way been Southern in character.