I was probably 35 when I wrote the first story. The voice is kind of a mix in that it has a young voice, but it's also someone who's looking back. I like that kind of double vision.

I feel very privileged to hear how somebody used to run around stickin' people up and stealing cars, and now they're gettin' their life back together... I just love the stories. The stories of the fallen world, they excite us. That's the interesting stuff.

Write the unpublishable.. .and then publish it.

There was a part of her she hadn’t yet allowed to be born because it was too beautiful for this place

[The doctor] peeked into the trauma room and saw the situation: the clerk - that is, me - standing next to the orderly, Georgie, both of us on drugs, looking down at a patient with a knife sticking up out of his face. 'What seems to be the trouble?' he asked.

With each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me.

Everybody’s got a mean side. Just don’t feed it till it grows.