I'm blessed in my good friends, and some of them happen to be writers, though that's almost never what our friendships are about. And every writer I've ever read, living or dead, has in one way or another helped and inspired. I have a feeling it's important not to mix the two up.

I have thought for a long time that the way my clothes hang on me is more important than me inside them.

There is a kind of poetry, bad and good, in evrything, everywhere we look.

A good argument, like a good dialogue, is always a proof of life, but I'd much rather go and read a book.

Outside the leaves on the trees constricted slightly; they were the deep done green of the beginning of autumn. It was a Sunday in September. There would only be four. The clouds were high and the swallows would be here for another month or so before they left for the south before they returned again next summer.

Short stories consume you faster. They're connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality. I know how tough they are as a form, but they're also a total joy.

Words are like untying a corset - you can move into this great space with them.