I think the path to becoming a writer has become more through the novel. It's easier to get a novel published than a book of stories, obviously, especially through big publishers.

What business does memory have with time?

What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he was dead?

I realized the structure in a collection is how they're put together. Structuring the collection became the art of it for me. Because the stories had all been written.

This is what happens when you live in dreams, he thought: you dream this and you dream that and you sleep right through your life.

I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in my office and torture the keys. My one saving grace as a writer is that, if I'm having trouble with the novel I'm writing, I write something else, a poem or a short story. I try to avoid writer's block by always writing something.

He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.