It remains unbelievable to me that I have any readers beyond my own blood relations - it's a crazy, wild gift.

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

Madness, as I understood it from books, meant a person who was open to the high white whine of everything.

In short stories there's more permission to be elliptical. You can have image-logic, or it's almost like a poem in that you can come to a lot of meanings within a short space.

When I was younger I used to lock myself in the bathroom and read in the dry tub. I was also a fan of the 'shoe closet.' Reading felt thrilling and illicit and deeply private to me, and I felt vulnerable doing it in public.

I often felt myself to be an outsider, which is great training for all writers.

At the end of the block where I used to live in Coconut Grove in Miami, there's a swampy area, a no-name alcove with a little mangrove estuary. It's beautiful.