As for "toothy kindness" - I think all traditions are full of this sort of tough kindness. If someone is on a wrong or dull path, and someone else startles them into awareness of that, then that's a blessing. And the method by which the startle is obtained might be anger, or satire, or an intentionally applied indifference. But that is, of course, a fine line.

While I'm doing [writing], I don't feel it.I don't think that's a failing. I think it's just a feature. Like, a feature of oneself.

If you at least try to do the things that excite you, it will make you a more expansive and present person - you’ll feel, at the end of your life, that at least you took the shot.

I love the idea that more people would read short fiction. I think it's such a humanizing form. It softens the boundaries between people.

Even the written history [of Abraham Lincoln's times] is poorly understood by most people.

With fiction, and also with nonfiction that you can take your time doing, you have a much better chance of reaching across the divide and connecting with somebody who is opposed to you on some things. They're opposed to you on one axis, which is politics, but if you go over the axis called puppies, you might find some common ground.

I've had that situation where I start writing somebody really miserable, and in order to make the story come alive, I have to give them a vote of confidence, make him vulnerable or wounded. But in real life, you often meet people who, in that particular moment, actually shouldn't get a vote of confidence.