At the heart of all good fiction and at the heart of all good gossip is the same thing: trouble.

A pure love is a selfless love, but can desire ever be selfless?

Drug programs began to turn their attention and money away from prevention and into maintenance. Methadone was cheaper than social workers, I suppose.

With each draft, the work gets better, and usually that means tighter. It means getting the precise word, not the approximate word.

I write with a fountain pen. And then revise word by word and line by line so that the first draft of a scene is usually the tenth or so draft.

Love is always a surprise and you never get it right.

I think I've learned to be mindful. I may not have taken the time to try to understand narrative techniques, let's say, with any rigor, if I did not also have to try to explain those techniques to someone else.