I understood at once, I am not living, but actively dying. I am smoking, living unhealthily. I’m shutting down. I need to go the other way, inside. And it was so clear to me what I was doing. It was suddenly perfectly clear. I understood, I need to write. Live here, in my words, and my head. I need to go inside, that’s all. No big, complicated, difficult thing. I just need to go in reverse. And not worry about what to write about, but just write. Or, if I’m going to worry about what to write, then do this worrying on paper, so at least I’m writing and will have a record of the anxiety.

Do not wait for the healing to arrive. It will never come. The holes will never leave or be filled with anything at all. But holes are interesting things.

I was in advertising for years. That was cushy, you know? It's pretty cushy in a lot of ways, but I hated it.

My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day.

I feel like they are two different things, and when I write books, they're just books. If they can be movies that's okay. But I would write a novel that couldn't be a film.

I like, though, that people have a hunger to connect with other people. They're desperate to know that you're not lying to them or misleading them.

I've just finished my next collection, Possible Side Effects, and I'm now working on a collection of holiday stories as well as a memoir about my relationship with my father.