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.

I've been a dad since I was nineteen, so I think a lot about fatherhood and the power of that sacrifice in your life.

You probably have to trust that your work is following certain themes and certain movements, but then the rest is a kind of piecing together so that the whole becomes larger than the parts.

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.

Sometimes what we want to do and what we must do are not the same. Pasquo, the smaller the space between your desire and what is right, the happier you will be.

He wished he could reassure his mother: a man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it.

I quickly decided my zombies weren't really zombies. It was instead something you called people who were on this club drug, who then exhibited aggressive behaviors. And then like everyone who writes about zombies, I found it was so much fun.