Some memories remain close; you can shut your eyes and find yourself back in them. But there are second-person memories, too, distant you memories, and these are trickier: you watch yourself in disbelief.

The stories tend to be what I work on when I'm stuck. Something will just pop into my head and I'll think that's more of a story.

There was a time when self-promotion was considered so verboten, especially for authors.

I love humor in writing, so I've written to the thing that's funny, there's the joke, but then I just kept going. I started thinking about all the bikes I've had stolen, and that got me thinking about crime, and that got me thinking about the city I'm in.

A writer needs four things to achieve greatness, Pasquale: desire, disappointment, and the sea.” “That’s only three.” Alvis finished his wine. “You have to do disappointment twice.

I think so, too. I know I felt that way. For years. It was as if I was a character in a movie and the real action was about to start at any minute. But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start.

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.