It's amazing what happens when you stick yourself in a place and let things take their more or less natural course.

Maybe the light's at the other end of the tunnel.

I'm ashamed and embarrassed to say that I've read very little of David Foster Wallace's work. It's a huge gap in my education, one of many.

I kept going back while I was writing the novel - which never sold, may it rest in peace - and by the time it was finished I had too many connections to Haiti to walk away.

I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess you can say I was on the slow train.

If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace.

By the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world.