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

Guilt is glorious when it's well earned.

My love for the child asleep in the crib, the child's need for me, for my vigilance, had made my life valuable in a way that even the most abundantly offered love, my parents', my brother's, even Tom's, had failed to do. Love was required of me now--to be given, not merely to be sought and returned.

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

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

The writing itself is the thing that generates stories for me.