But if you kept thinking about a fight you’d lost, Mom said, you were programming yourself to lose again.

Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

I swim with all my strength. No superhuman surge, or pony heroics; it's just me at my most desperate.

My mom says I'm destined to be the sort of man who uses big words but pronounces them incorrectly.

I'm probably a lot closer than perhaps the contents of my early fiction suggest to a jaded Denny's waitress with smoker's-lung-black humor than a ghost hunter.

Myth continues to be a valuable way to understand parts of our nature that we can't quantify.

You don't want people to think you're just writing stories for children about a pig in a tutu.