I understand what something short should be like. I understand beauty in that form. If I start extending, somehow I kind of lose my bearings.

Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

With nonfiction, I go in trying to be really honest about what my preconceptions are.

If you haven't read you don't have the voice. The lack of voice eliminates experience.

That's one of the reasons I take a lot of consolation in fiction. You have years to work on it. I think that allows you to reach for the best part of your reader instead of a lot of the internet stuff, in which you're kind of reaching for the worst or the most shallow part of your reader.