There's a notion of art in this country that you have to be nutty or special or "called" in order to be an artist. I believe the questions everyone should ask themselves are, "Do you want to do it? Are you willing to do it poorly? Are you willing to do the work of doing it? Are you willing to persist when everybody tells you it's silly?" If you're willing to do that, then you can do it.

I would hesitate to say the characters [ in Bink & Gollie] are too related to either to us [me and Alison McGhee], but they certainly draw on our physical traits and personality traits and then exaggerate them to the nth degree.

I show up and try, but I may have to ask myself if I need to wait and let myself regenerate and take a break. I know that this thing that makes the stories has to be treated gently. So sometimes I'll just stop and let the well fill up. With my work, sometimes I hate doing it, but I love having done it. The key is to keep doing it.

He was reading from the beginning so that he could get to the end, where the reader was assured that the knight and the fair maiden lived together happily ever after.

I thought I was going nowhere. Now I can see there was a pattern.

There is a lot of love in him, a lot of love in his heart...And he is up there with no one and nothing to love. It is a bad thing to have love and no where to put it.

When you are a king, you may make as many ridiculous laws as you like. That is what being a king is all about.