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

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.

Writing a story, you understand, is not done by consensus. But we do learn from each other, and we remind ourselves how important this work we're doing is.

I used to believe that love and happiness were synonymous. I was a fool. Love intensifies all emotions. Nothing is so painful o so sweet, so thrilling or so desperate... Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love thats essential. You are never so alive as when you love, never so alert, intuitive, attentive, never so smart or so compassionate.

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.

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.

I learned to love stories by listening to them.