I am fascinated by tiny, incremental changes, almost imperceptible shifts in how people orient themselves in the world, because those are in some ways the most hopeful.

The act of language or the act of denying language carries its own heaviness.

It just fascinates me, those private mechanisms that we use to make sense of the world - whether they have to do with the five senses or not. I think literature is one of the only kinds of art that truly lets us into that.

In my short stories there's a lot of focus on people successfully and not successfully responding to some sorts of discomforts or instabilities.

Giving the reader the space to move around and be active, and encourage their active response is important to me. That will connect the reader more to the text.

When I watch students make particular decisions about language, structure, and form, it sharpens my own thinking and my own development as a writer.

I felt sure about wanting to look at a person's life that had been limited or damaged, but not necessarily ennobled, by loss.