Other things awaited. It was good to be young and to know it for once. So much unfolding to do.

To my parents, writing seemed precarious and not the best idea.

I sold a book six years after I left an MFA program. In between, there was a lot of endurance of poverty and a lot of fighting off doubt. It's all a part of the process of being or becoming a writer.

I play American football every Saturday, which I find calming.

The challenge for any fiction writer is that your job involves simply sitting at a desk for a very, very long time.

A lot of writers choose to live in New York, partly because of the literary culture here, and partly because Brooklyn's a pretty nice place to live. And a lot of writers who might not geographically reside in New York still point their ambitions towards New York in some sense.

Other things awaited. It was good to be young and to know it for once. So much unfolding to do.