It's better to be nominated for awards than not to be nominated for them, but of course to some degree such awards [National Book Award] are always subjective.

I feel quite at home writing short stories but nervous and anxious when writing novels, as if the bad time of consecutive failures might arise again.

Literature is not a sack race. There aren't real winners and losers in the Republic of Letters.

Literature is not an instruction manual.

Short story characters, mine anyway, are usually driven by impulse, not so much by their histories and the choices that they have to make.

The truth is that I'm never sure how any of my books will be received, and because I can be thin-skinned, I try not to read too many reviews when a book first comes out.

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