There is a certain type of conversation one hears only when one is drunk and it is like a dream, full of humor and threat and significance, deep significance.

Writers end up writing stories-or rather, stories' shadows-and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough

The writer trusts nothing she writes-it should be too reckless and alive for that, it should be beautiful and menacing and slightly out of control. . . . Good writing . . . explodes in the reader's face. Whenever the writer writes, it's always three or four or five o'clock in the morning in her head.

Of course there is nothing that cannot be done incorrectly.

But who knows what good might come from the least of us? From the bones of old horses is made the most beautiful Prussian Blue.

As you grow older, you'll find that you enjoy talking to strangers far more than to your friends.

I think I had the same notion most people have, which is it’s simply a town that percolates around country music. Though country-music history is deep and richly steeped throughout the city, this is a place that’s been expanding musically and culturally…People coming from Europe and Canada-there are all kinds of different cultures and different music being represented here. It continues to blossom.