Even a day writing badly for me is 10 times better than a day where I don’t write at all.

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.

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.

I was always a sensitive, sweet kid, but I got brutalized and I became brutal. And frankly, I don't think it was my natural makeup. I don't think its anyone's natural makeup to be a violent brawler.

After the dead are buried, after the physical pain of grief has become a permanent wound in the soul, then comes the transcendent and common bond of human suffering, and with that comes forgiveness, and with forgiveness comes love.

We receive and we lose, and we must try to achieve gratitude; and with that gratitude to embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses.

My mother was making $135 a week, but she had resilience and imagination. She might take frozen vegetables, cook them with garlic, onion and Spam, and it would taste like a four-star dinner.