She thought she'd put up with however many years of stonewalling for a good reason, and she'd just figured out that as far as Castle Hubby went, she hadn't even crossed the moat yet.

I'll find something in what I read that snags my imagination in emotional terms; it resonates with me for reasons more complicated than just that it seems like it would make a good story.

The etiquette of blurbs means it's not hard to not blurb something (if it's not by a friend, or student): everyone knows how many books you're deluged with. You can just say you never got to it.

I do find stories - or literary fiction - an apt form for analyzing the world. And especially for trying to imagine the other. An agenda, again, that seems more important now than ever.

The longer you go by yourself the weirder you get, and the weirder you get the longer you go by yourself.

I have written screenplays. Most recently for Errol Morris, who was thinking about doing his first fiction movie, and with a young director who wanted to adopt Project X. Errol was a hoot. I loved talking with him. We were a good match, too, because we both kept joking that we'd found the only other person on earth more ambivalent than we were about the project.

Does research get in the way of the story? It certainly can. Anything can, given that as writers we're all geniuses at procrastination. But mostly research teaches me about the world. Which often shows me the way, in terms of the story.