It's very hard to know who your readers are, but that's who I'm... if I have somebody in my head, that's probably who it is.

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark; professionals built the Titanic. Never, btw, ask that androgynous paper clip anything. S/he is just a stooge for management, leading you down more rabbit holes of options for things called Wizards, Macros, Templates, and Cascading Style Sheets.

The short story is not as restrictive as the sonnet, but, of all the literary forms, it is possibly the most single-minded. ...at the end there has to be the literary equivalent of the magician's puff of smoke, an outcome that is both startling and anticipated.

If you write for the New Yorker, you always get people critiquing your grammar, you can count on it. So, because a lot of New Yorker readers are kind of, you know, amateur grammarians and so you do get a lot of that.

You have to have students wanting to take the courses, otherwise you're not going, they're not going to be very effective.

I don't think the same curriculum fits every student body.

One of the good things about the profession of being a professor, is that you also have time to do what interests you and what you care about or what you're good at.