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

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 know when a story is finished when there is not a single thing more I can think to do to it. And since I know at the start what the last line will be, I know when I've reached that point as logically as I can that it's finished. As for the rewriting-it's not foolproof, of course, but if you're honest about having thought of every possibility and you still come back to what you have, what more can you do?

Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.

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

I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.

Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We've read our Shakespeare.