We can speculate. Last time I checked, the future doesn't take my advice.

It's just a matter of willpower. The day you decide it's over, it's over. You never get over it.

I guess it's true what they say: if you wait long enough everything changes.

As for my slowness as a writer - that's been a struggle, no question. We live in a culture that values and rewards machine-speed productivity. Even the arts are expected to conform to the Taylor model of productivity.

We know story collections end when they end, as well - the pages serving as a countdown - but nevertheless the standard story anthology hews closer to what makes being human so hard: it reminds you with each story how quickly everything we are, everything we call our lives can change, can be upended, can disappear. Never to return.

You were at the age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, over a gesture

I think men spend so much time passing for being men.