Better to think of writing, of what one does, as an activity, rather than an identity to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun.

Nothing's a joke with me. It just all comes out like one.

You emptied the top rack of the dishwasher but not the bottom, so the clean dishes have gotten all mixed up with the dirty ones - and now you want to have sex?

Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself.

I don’t go back and look at my early work, because the last time I did, many years ago, it left me cringing. If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.

If one loves stories, then one would naturally love the story of the story. Or the story behind the story, pick your preposition. It does seem to me to be a kind of animal impulse almost, a mammalian curiosity. For a reader to wonder about the autobiography in a fiction may be completely unavoidable and in fact may speak to the success of a particular narrative, though it may also speak to its failure.

I've never been to a dinner party where everyone at the dinner table didn't say something funny.