We're so quick to cut away pieces of ourselves to suit a particular relationship, a job, a circle of friends, incessantly editing who we are until we fit in.

It's all a matter of paying attention, being awake in the present moment, and not expecting a huge payoff. The magic in this world seems to work in whispers and small kindnesses.

The thing I like so much about short stories is that there isn't as much of an investment of time so I'm free to experiment more. If it doesn't work out, I've only lost a week or two of work. If I screw up a novel I've lost at least a year's worth of work. But the nice thing is that those experiments with short stories can be carried over to novels when the experiments do work.

It's all those stories and how they braid together that tells us who and what and where we are

I'm a writer and this is what I do no matter what name we put to it. Year by year, the world is turning into a darker and stranger place than any of us could want. This is the only thing I do that has potential to shine a little further than my immediate surroundings. For me, each story is a little candle held up to the dark of night, trying to illuminate the hope for a better world where we all respect and care for each other.

Not everything has to mean something. Some things just are.

... we chase after ghosts and spirits and are left holding only memories and dreams. It's not that we want what we can't have; it's that we've held all we could want and then had to watch it slip away.