I don't think that writing, real writing, has much to do with affirming belief--if anything it causes rifts and gaps in belief which make belief more complex and more textured, more real. Good writing unsettles, destroys both the author and the reader. From my perspective, there always has to be a tension between the writer and the monolithic elements of the culture, such as religion.

I read individual stories a lot in magazines and other places, too, but I really think there's something to be said for reading story collections as collections. That's not true of all story collections, to be honest, but for good ones I think it often is true.

Misreading is a big part of reading, the way in which the level of attention you're paying can lead to some interesting residue.

Anything can happen: anything. Or nothing. Who can say? The world, monstrous, is made that way, and in the end consumes us all. Who am I, administrated or no, to have the audacity to survive it?

One of the primary differences for me between fiction and poetry is that fiction uses every sort of tool that poetry does but hides it much, much more. Fiction doesn't necessarily reveal what it's doing with rhythm and sound and patterning.

Ideas for stories come in really different terms and really different ways for me. Sometimes they're from books, sometimes they're just kind of out of the air, from nowhere, sometimes they're biographical, or sometimes they're other things [everyday life].

When I say I'm instinctive [in writing], I do feel like I need to hide what I'm doing from myself. My mind just needs to be able to operate untrammeled.