A mathematical proof is beautiful, but when you're finished, it's really only about one thing. A story can be about many things.

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

That's why I have to be a fiction writer, because I can't remember what just happened or where I went last week or what movie I just watched with my husband. I'm better off just making things up.

I figure that I'm always going to be fine, one way or another, but I do worry about other people who have difficulty moving from one world to the next. It's the folks who are truly invested in their lives who have the hardest time with change.

I wasn't writing stories with the intention of creating a particular collection. I simply wrote stories, and then discovered common themes among a good number of them.

After a year, it was great to get out of L.A. and return to Hyde Park. Since my grandparents lived in Hyde Park, I had been coming there since I was a tyke.

When I was little, we lived on 8 acres and my mom had a horse. But when I was 7, my mom kicked my dad out, and then in order to feed us five kids, she got critters cheap or for free and raised them for food. We milked a cow, raised chickens, pigs and beef cattle. We heated our one-story house with wood and stayed cold all winter.