There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.

I'm a complete and utter fiction. Then again, we all are.

Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get the language right.

I was fascinated by the lack of a word for a parent who has lost a child. We have no word in English. I thought for sure there'd be a word in Irish but there is none. And then I looked in several other languages and could not find one, until I found the word Sh'khol in Hebrew. I'm still not sure why so many languages don't have a word for this sort of bereavement, this shadowing.

He might have been naive, but he didn't care; he said he's rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end up another cynic.

If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.

I think it is our job, as writers, to be epic. Epic and tiny at the same time. If you're going to be a fiction writer, why not take on something that means something. In doing this, you must understand that within that epic structure it is the tiny story that is possibly more important.