What you create when you're teaching fiction writing is a kind of literary salon, not a social club or a mutual admiration society, not a debating society, not a repair shop, not a fight club or a soap box. It's a place to have a conversation about a story.

You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second, but your life can go missing and you don't even know it.

I was reading for understanding. I wanted to do to a reader what Salinger did for me.

I learned to love stories by listening to them.

Every person in therapy has a love disorder.

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.

Novels are written, not wished into existence. You have to sit your ass in the chair or nothing gets done.