Try to get your characters into interesting trouble. Allow your characters to misbehave. Let them stay out after 11.

If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.

Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too.

What a midwesterner he was, a thoroughly unhip guy with his heart in the usual place, on the sleeve, in plain sight.

What's agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn't care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you.

When readers don't like the book, it's usually because they feel that romantic love is pass or somehow needs more irony.

When I'm writing, I'm waiting to see somebody, and I'm waiting to hear them. It's almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.