Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be.

There's a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we've left it.

People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect.

About 25 years ago, I took a bicycle across the United States. I soon found out that the greatest item of clothing was the trusty bandanna. There were dozens of uses for a bandanna - as a pot holder, a chain cleaner, a sun shield, a headband, a snot rag, a declaration of Kerouacian intent.

Let this be a lesson to us all, said the preacher. You will be walking someday in the dark and the truth will come shining through, and behind you will be a life that you never want to see again.

I love short stories. They're like small imploding universes. They are very tightly bound and controlled. I'd been wanting to write one for ages but just got tangled up in novels. The novel is the same in the sense that it is also a universe, but it explodes outwards with all that shrapnel going in several different directions. I don't see too much difference in the forms except for the fact that writing short stories is like sprinting rather than long-distance running.

Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.