I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art.

Teaching well draws from the same well that writing draws from: the reserves of compassion and ability to listen and concentrate on another. So I have to have fine line between teaching and writing. I try not to ever think of career. I just try to go to the dream world every day.

I love the earth too much to contemplate a life apart from it, although I believe in that life.

I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art.

Romance dies hard, because its very nature is to want to live.

Short story writers simply do what human beings have always done. They write stories because they have to; because they cannot rest until they have tried as hard as they can to write the stories. They cannot rest because they are human, and all of us need to speak into the silence of mortality, to interrupt and ever so briefly stop that quiet flow, and with stories try to understand at least some of it.

The truth is life is full of joy and full of great sorrow, but you can't have one without the other.