In real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them

Point of view is not something I consciously decide. Almost always, when I come up with a plot I find that the point of view has automatically arrived with it, part and parcel of the story.

I suspect that marriage is like parenthood: every last one of us is an amateur at it.

Farmers are patient men. They got to be. Got to see those seeds come up week by week, fraction by fraction, and sweat it out for some days not knowing yet is it weeds or vegetables.

...he thought of dying as a kind of adventure, something new that he hadn't yet experienced. Like an unusual vacation trip.

Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?

The first-person viewpoint is more enjoyable to write, because it lets me meander more freely, and it can reveal more of the character's self-delusions. Really all the advantages are with first-person, so I'm sorry I don't get to pick and choose.