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've found that my first drafts are not so special. But the more I work on them, the better they get. They are more unique and defensible.

"Kindness" can mean a lot of different things. In this case, I felt I had to present his [Donald Trump's] supporters in as fair a light as possible - many of them hadn't been interviewed before and that entailed some interviewer-courtesy in the editing and so on.

Whether you're eighteen or sixty, in a certain way, whatever you know is valid.

A hip-looking teen watches an elderly woman hobble across the street on a walker. "Grammy's here!" he shouts. He puts some MacAttack Mac&Cheese in the microwave and dons headphones and takes out a video game so he won't be bored during the forty seconds it takes his lunch to cook. A truck comes around the corner and hits Grammy, sending her flying over the roof into the backyard, where luckily she lands on a trampoline. Unluckily, she bounces back over the roof, into the front yard, landing on a rosebush.

He was a father. That's what a father does.Eases the burdens of those he loves. Saves the ones he loves from painful last images that might endure for a lifetime.

I knew if I evoked that stuff too easily or gratuitously, as a way of assuaging my fears of not being edgy or whatever, the writing would fall apart. This book [Lincoln in the Bardo] was going to have to have some earnestness in it.