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.

The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.

I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper.

Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love that's essential.

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

I sat around the kitchen every Sunday afternoon listening to my mother and aunts talk about the people in the neighborhood. Gossip - I loved it. And that turns out to be the writer's job: to attend to the gossip and spread it as far as you can.

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.