Fiction is a particular kind of rhetoric, a way of thinking that I think can be useful in your life. It asks you to image the world through someone else's eyes, and it allows you to try to empathize with situations that you haven't actually experienced.

I don't think anybody deals well with tragedy or grief, but maybe my characters are particularly bad at it. Which is why I love them.

The thing that made me turn more towards writing was realizing how hard it was going to be to get a singular vision on film and how much more control I would have if I were writing novels.

Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story.

I feel like I go back and forth between being fairly fatalistic and really more hopeful about the possibilities of things changing. And will see how that goes in this election cycle. That will probably strongly affect how fatalistic I am.

People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true crime tale, we find ourselves fascinated because we're trying to understand why people behave the way they do, why they make the choices they do, how we become who we become.

A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.