There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant — sail for Asia and stumble on America — and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along.

There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant — sail for Asia and stumble on America — and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along.

I come from a newspaper background, so maybe Im attuned to current events.

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.

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

All we have is the story we tell.

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.