One of the accidental joys of my writing life has been that I've had some lovely, surprisingly good fortune with readers, and I've brought readers to my dad's work. I can't tell you the joy that gives me. Because my father's work was masterful.

For ritual allows those who cannot will themselves out of the secular to perform the spiritual, as dancing allows the tongue-tied man a ceremony of love.

I wonder if politicians know less about the land, now that they campaign by air.

One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can’t drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs.

I feel that writers think with their noses to the ground, and the dark stuff kind of comes to me more, even though I really am sort of an upbeat guy. It's an honest descent into darkness. And you can't have the joy without the grief - it's why we listen to Mozart's 'Requiem.'

I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live.

That was the source of my vanity and my cowardice: always I believed everyone was watching me.