I do have trouble with titles.

Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness and they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy, or they become legends.

I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.

Being a writer requires an intoxication with language.

The answer is always in the entire story, not a piece of it.

When we were children we were errant enough to wish to be birds for the day but there's nothing easier to lose than playfulness.

We Americans are trained to think big, talk big, act big, love big, admire bigness but then the essential mystery is in the small.