Another older writer that had a huge influence on me is Chekhov. More contemporarily, it's hard to say.

I mean, first, almost all writers these days teach because they don't make enough money publishing to live on, to support themselves - people like Tobias Wolff, Anne Beattie, Amy Hempel, Stuart Dybek; a lot of short story writers, for one thing.

Looking at and shaping your own work is a very intuitive process. You see something you've written in your notebook. It's there on the page and either feels right or it doesn't, and it's hard sometimes to go beyond that and discover why it feels that way.

Most writers, most books, you have no idea whether it was a dollar or a million dollars.

Tall people have a real advantage in the world.

I tended to write the book in these bursts of two or three months at a time. So I would know, or at least feel securely, that for the next few months I was at least going to have a few hours a day.

Getting your foot in the door with some publishing people can be important when you're starting out as a writer, but it's also not enough to get you where you need to be.