Even when our death is imminent, we carry the image of ourselves moving forward, alive, into the future.

You can recognize in your own reading habits what writers are doing that works and what doesn't. I'm becoming much more aware of that after reading a decade of student stories.

Writing about women's sexuality is very scary for me because I'm always afraid I'll get it wrong.

Plot and scene are still the hardest things for me, though I think they're the building blocks of what makes a story work.

A lot of people work really diligently to maintain a "profile" in the writing world, but that's so hard, and so boring most of the time. So you just keep doing what you like to do, I guess, and try to enjoy it.

Here is the door of my mom's house, well-remembered childhood portal. Here is the yard, and a set of wires that runs from the house to a wooden pole, and some fat birds sitting together on the wires, five of them lined up like beads on an abacus.

The happiest I have ever been is in the life that I led with my wife and kids.