As a lower-class kid, I was raised to think success would be owning stuff. Having that great job, too. Now I find my parents' dream was wrong. You never really own anything. And you're never really finished as a person.

My writing has to excite people and depict or include their experiences. That's part of my process - to go out and interact with people. It's very much like an archival process. I understand that the Brothers Grimm would go out and get people talking so they could document folk tales that weren't being documented any other way. I try to offer a little bit of myself - some experience from my life that evokes stories in other people.

History is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.

Some mythological fat asswipe drives our national economy.

In good old Colonial Dunsboro, masochism is a valuable job skill. It is in most jobs.

I used to work in a funeral home to feel good about myself, just the fact that I was breathing.

At some point, your memories, your stories, your adventures, will be the only things you'll have left.