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.

He found himself in habiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.

His life was two lives now: the life he would have and the life he would forever wonder about.

The first seven years that I wrote fiction, I sent out stories and a novel and made a total of $25.

Who isn't crazy sometimes? Who hasn't driven around a block hoping a certain person will come out; who hasn't haunted a certain coffee shop, or stared obsessively at an old picture; who hasn't toiled over every word in a letter, taken four hours to write a two-sentence email, watched the phone praying it will ring; who doesn't lay awake at night sick with the image of her sleeping with someone else?

All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!

I think suspense should be like any other color on a writers palette. I suppose Im in the minority but I think its crazy for literary fiction to divorce itself from stories that are suspenseful, and assign anything with cops or spies or criminals to some genre ghetto.