...smile first, then speak.

As a writer I'm essentially just trying to impersonate a first-time reader, who picks up the story and has to decide, at every point, whether to keep going.

I'm turning 58, and you get that kind of weird, old-guy feeling of you don't have an infinite number of years left and if there's anything you want to say or represent, it's time to try it.

Fiction is open to whoever comes in the door, as long as you come in energetically.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

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.

I read to make myself feel awake.