We have to move toward specificity, intelligence, facts, proof, and mutual affection. What I think people have to do now is be very, very assertive about the utter essentiality of intellectual undertakings.

When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you. What I want is to have the reader come out just 6 percent more awake to the world.

I'm very happy - if I can do even a little bit of work to get the short story out more, I'm thrilled.

Toni Morrison seems to have a lot of faith in people - that's what I mean by gentle power.

In the Buddhist texts, some of them say, when you die, basically that wild horse gets cut loose, and the mind is incredibly powerful and expansive, omniscient and can go anywhere and see anything, but - and this is the catch - it's colored by the habits of thought we made in life.

I think if someone could demonstrate to me that fiction did no good, I would still do it, because I think it does good for me.

The most hopeful thing in the stories, I hope, is wit. I make it up. If I make up a world in which we're ruled by big talking turds, it doesn't mean that we are. So you shouldn't feel depressed.