I sort of like writing about weird characters, I guess.

I spent thirty-two years in a paper mill in southern Ohio, and before that I worked in a meatpacking plant and a shoe factory.

When I turned fifty, I decided to quit the mill and go to graduate school.

Id always been a big reader, and I loved books, and I always thought writing would be a great way to get by in the world.

I'm trying to break myself of that habit [of not writing out a first draft ] because I'm working on a couple novels and I know if I tried to write those books the way I wrote the stories it would take me years to finish.

I don't think my book is any more shocking than if I went out right now and brought back your local newspaper and found a story that happened around here yesterday or the day before that's just as shocking as anything in my book.

I'm not sure I would have ever decided to try to write when I was forty-five if I hadn't already gotten that degree [in English].