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.

We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It's a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it's true, but then so's everything.

It's good to have mysteries. It reminds us that there's more to the world than just making do and having a bit of fun.

It is important to know what a person was. But it's more important to know what they are now.

You wouldn't want any creative process to lose its sense of fun and adventure, but that doesn't mean you can't take it seriously as well.

A name can't begin to encompass the sum of all her parts. But that's the magic of names, isn't it? That the complex, contradictory individuals we are can be called up complete and whole in another mind through the simple sorcery of a name.

I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile.