The world was a cruder, more vulgar place than the one I had known. This was the language required to live in it, I supposed.

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.

We are surrounded by story.

Fiction that intends to be something other than entertainment has a certain obligation, I think, to convince the reader, every time, that what is to be evoked - character, experience, idea - is worthy of his or her consideration, intellectual energy, close attention.

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

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

Guilt is glorious when it's well earned.