I started writing by doing small related things but not the thing itself, circling it and getting closer. I had no idea how to write fiction. So I did journalism because there were rules I could learn. You can teach someone to write a news story. They might not write a great one, but you can teach that pretty easily.

Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good?

I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.

Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.

When the beer is gone, so are they -- flexing their cars on up the boulevard.

I'm not good at small talk; I'm not good at big talk; and medium talk just doesn't come up.

Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive.