I want a real encounter with something true and disconcerting about peoples' natures.

I tended to be drawn to the weirder, darker stuff. Horror and sci-fi anthologies.

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.

I didn’t realize that one tragedy can beget another, and another — bright-eyed disasters flooding out of a death hole like bats out of a cave.

I have a B.A. in Spanish, so briefly I thought that somebody might pay me to speak Spanish badly in another country, like Norway.

Once you figure out what's best for the story, take out the rest.

Regret is a pilgrimage back to the place where I was free to choose.