I know electric knives are excellent for carving turkeys that have had their bones removed and been forced into a mold to shape them. Please note that those turkeys are called hams.

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

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.

Most people presume my mustache is not real because it's much darker than my regular hair.

People who run for president seriously and people who become president enter a bizarre secret society in which they have had an experience that none of us will ever have.

I don't wish to brag, but I'm very intelligent.

I am a marginally employed person who can escape with my school teacher wife to the waters of Maine for much of the summer.