The idea that America has cornered the market on anti-immigration is ridiculous. It's a global phenomenon.

Usually at the end of each story we're thrown clear out of the story's world and then we're given a new world to enter. What's unique about a linked collection is that it can deliver both sets of narrative pleasures - the novel's long immersion into character-world and the story anthology's energetic (and mortal) brevity - the linked collection is unique in its ability to be both abrupt and longitudinal simultaneously.

Anger has a way of returning.

You're the only person I've ever met who can stand a bookstore as long as I can.

The only difference between a published and unpublished writer is a tolerance for imperfection.

I never wanted to be away from the family. Intuitively, I knew how easily distances could harden and become permanent.

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.