The funny thing is, about the time I let go of any aspiration toward worldly success, that's about the time I started writing decent work.

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

I think I was lucky to come of age in a place and time - the American South in the 1960s and '70s - when the machine hadn't completely taken over life. The natural world was still the world, and machines - TV, telephone, cars - were still more or less ancillary, and computers were unheard of in everyday life.

I'm a writer, not an editor, and though the editing rarely cut into my writing time, it did take away from that walking-around-thinking-about-it-when-you're-not-thinking-about-it time that I think is important for writers. When you're half-thinking about what you're working on while driving, cooking . . . just letting things sift and settle, come to you.

I never listen to music when I'm writing.

You'd think family would be the one sure thing in life, the gimme? Points you got just for being born? So much thick, meaty stuff bound you to these people, so many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing.

From about the age of 15 or 16 I'd had the notion that I wanted to write fiction, and I'd done enough in college to satisfy myself that I had a knack for it - I wouldn't call it "talent" - though I wondered if I'd ever have the guts to actually commit to it.