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.

I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.

Since his mother died I have seen him steam a cucumber thinking it was zucchini. That's the kind of thing that turns my heart right over.

I wanted to be a veterinarian, but slipped up when I hit organic chemistry.

The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me.

The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss--you have gone and lost something else.

I assemble stories-me and a hundred million other people-at the sentence level. Not by coming up with a sweeping story line.