A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

When it comes to finding available men in Minnesota, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

I don't have a great eye for detail. I leave blanks in all of my stories. I leave out all detail, which leaves the reader to fill in something better.

Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.

The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, 'Daddy, I need to ask you something,' he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.

Roy Blount's stuff makes me laugh so hard, sometimes I have to go sit in a room and shut the door

Sometimes you have to avoid mentioning things because people's feelings are tender.