I'm such a baby if I even get a flu.

With non-fiction writing I feel like I'm confined and driven by what actually happened. That makes the "plot". So it's a process of getting all of my notes typed up, then scanning through the notes, trying to extract or find certain vignettes that seem like they might write well - that might have a potential for good energy, shape, etc. And then at some point I start stringing these together, keeping an eye on the word count.

In my personal and spiritual life, I reject that. I don't believe in that. I'm always trying to get my mind into a less judgmental place, making less rigid judgments about things like "perverse" versus "pure." But in terms of prose, those sorts of oppositions seem to work.

I was a straight arrow, a control freak. I didn't do drugs or drink, and this was the '70s. I didn't like the loss of control. Which isn't exactly right, because I didn't know what happened when you did drugs.

I remember reading The Bluest Eye when I was a young parent, and something opened in me. That's the highest aspiration.

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.

I'm a big fan of the Russians: Isaac Babel is just an exquisite line-to-line stylist.