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.

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

Maybe love, like suffering, is relative.

The thing that grounds you, and the thing that really gives you a sense of wholeness, is your family, friends and your community. Those are the things that can mirror back to you what you're experiencing, and can affirm to you that the stories you are telling are true.

The earliest impetuses for writing, for me, were simply the strange things I happened to notice in my everyday life, stuff I read about in the grocery store tabloids my mom bought, situations that struck me as compelling, anecdotes I'd heard, images, words, metaphors.

I guess I'm curious about how people process grief and how they process loss. And I'm also interested in the ways in which an event can have long-reaching consequences and a life over the course of years.

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.