What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

Once the rains abated, my father's garden thrived in the heat like an unleashed temper.

Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed till early dawn, throwing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who, you know perfectly well, are made up.

I've never gotten over high school, to the extent that I'm still a little surprised that my friends want to hang out with me.

He had senile dementia and liked to go outside naked, but he could still do two things perfectly: win at checkers and write out prescriptions.

If you're writing, you're a writer. If you're talking about it or thinking about it, I'm not so sure. Writing is ninety-eight percent work and two percent magic.

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.