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

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

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.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

People really get myopic as they get older. We're not a culture that encourages dreaming or distraction. We're not ever good at just being. I remember reading some Adrienne Rich quote where she talks about how important it was just to watch bubbles rise in a glass.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.