We are at the mercy of time, and for all the ways we are remembered, a sea of things will be lost. But how much is contained in what lingers!

We are surrounded by story.

What makes a sentence, a phrase, a moment, or a scene delightful? Something about recognizing the truth in it, hearing the music in it, understanding, intuitively perhaps, that the words are just right. It's not a matter of even context - delight is not limited to scenes or descriptions of happiness or beauty - but of aesthetic appreciation of the thing itself. As a reader, I find it's that moment when I want to stop reading, and also that moment when I know I can't. Delight is that it's what takes me by surprise and reminds me why I love the literary arts above all others.

I'd like to be better at short, snappy answers.

A good writer sells out everybody he knows, sooner or later.

I'm always telling my students, don't - don't worry so much third person, first person. It doesn't make that much difference.

"Someone": I understood that this was a character who in her own life her voice hadn't much been heard and in literature her life isn't much heard. For me, it was resisting all the more appealing characters and listening to the voice that hadn't been much heard from.