I have a second-degree black belt in Okinawan kobudo weapons training.

My donkeys are Jack and Don Quixote. They're very smart, very cautious. Much of what people consider stubbornness in donkeys is actually cautiousness.

Maybe the hardest lesson is the one I have to learn over and over again, that each story is its own animal, that every story I write is going to come only with difficulty.

You can't beat a good sonnet, and you can write a sonnet without being married to the damned thing.

Men didn't understand that you couldn't let yourself be consumed with passion when there were so many people needing your attention, when there was so much work to do. Men didn't understand that there was nothing big enough to exempt you from your obligations, which began as soon as the sun rose over the paper company and ended only after you'd finished the day's chores and fell exhausted into sleep against the background noise of I-94.

Time is never wasted coming to an old man bar.

I can't personally drink or fight too much nowadays because I have to be perky in the morning in order to write.