My favorite season is autumn, and Maine is lovely for that reason. In Maine, autumn begins on July 29. That's when you start building a fire in the fireplace and the leaves literally start falling from the trees. It is a cold and rugged and a beautiful place that reminds you with its many death traps - its painfully cold oceans, its sharp, jagged beaches, and perilous cliffsides - that nature doesn't care whether you live or die.

Stories hold power because they convey the illusion that life has purpose and direction. Where God is absent from the lives of all but the most blessed, the writer, of all people, replaces that ordering principle. Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that, while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.

I navigated the world as a hedge maze of constant fear and worry in which I might take the wrong turn and jeopardize the love of everyone around me and everyone on Earth. That's what I needed in order to survive.

I have no skills. I mean, I can make jokes, I'm pretty good at talking to people on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I can figure out what makes a pretty good story, and I can make eggs really well.

I would definitely make eggs for the rest of my life if I could.

My memories of literary agenting are of a very happy time and there are surprising reminders of it coming back now.

Everyone wants to write a book. Very few people are able to do it.