“Discipline. I saw how if my mother didn’t practice every day, her playing suffered. It’s the same for a writer. You have to practice every day. I also saw how she could go to the piano in a bad mood and usually come away an hour later in a much better frame of mind. I was terribly disorganized and undisciplined in every other way, but I developed enormous discipline for writing, because it was the only thing that ever made me happy when I was younger.”
