The landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your childhood.

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.

Every person in therapy has a love disorder.

The facts, however, are unimportant in fiction. It's not the events of my life that I mine, but the emotional experiences I've had.

We all sleep with the corpses of our dead lovers.

Revision is not the end of the creative process, but a new beginning. It's a chance not just to clean up and edit, but to open up and discover. The energetic prose comes about from all the energy that went into crafting it, I suppose.

The universe may be tenderly indifferent to our fate, but we shouldn’t be. We are our brothers’ keepers. There is right, and there is wrong. There are consequences to our actions or inactions. Disregard can be an act of violence.