My stories, I can understand them as a little toy that you wind up and you put it on the floor and it just goes under the coach. That I get. Beyond that, I'm a little lost.

The main thing a childhood in the Church did for me, I think, was set up the universe as a moral system. Once you've seen it that way, it always seems that way.

I think that's one of the maybe under-discussed aspects of process - the difference between a good writing day and a bad one is the quality of the split-second decisions you made.

I believe that, when [meeting of writer and reader] happens and the reader goes out into the world the next day, there's some alteration that might possibly inflect the person positively.

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 lover of America. I love the people, but also the weird berms, the strange little high schools tucked away in different places, and just the whole geography and the psycho­logical apparatus of Americans.

I don't tend to work directly from life, except in trying to mimic or match the outlines of its insanity. In other words, when I live through something, I just try to say to myself, "OK, remember this - life is really this crazy or scary or beautiful or surprising - so try to 'get at' that in your stories.