I was worried that, as a college teacher, if I wrote too much about intergenerational sex my students would be creeped out.

It is not like a premonition of death. It is as if she died a long time ago, and she just now remembered it.

There's a lot of effort expended once you begin to completely trash your life. Sometimes, writing feels like this to me.

I tend to like order in almost every other aspect of my life, but for me, the process of writing is really chaotic and decadent and indulgent.

In the end, there probably isn't much difference between being in love and acting like you're in love.

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.

I start with an image, then I go from the image toward exploring the situation. Then I write a scene, and from the scene I find the character, from the character I find the larger plot. It's like deductive reasoning - I start with the smaller stuff and work backward.