Ideologically, I have a lot of problems with that, especially when people toss around that form of story as realism. What's called "realism" is actually highly formulaic.

When you have an authority figure tell you something that distinguishes you, there's a little bit of a badge of courage or pride point that comes with it, and also some relief that the grownups actually have an answer for the problem. But, at the same time, there's suspicion and defensiveness, like, Why is the way I do things a problem? Maybe the way you do things is the problem. All of these things come with the very notion that you've been described.

To make a beautiful piece means you have really witnessed it and really made decisions about it.

I didn't learn how to read and write until pretty late, and it was this very mysterious, incredible thing, like driving, that I didn't get to do. And then I started writing things down on little scraps of paper and I would hide them. I would write the year on them and then I would stuff them in a drawer somewhere. But I didn't start to really read until about eight. I'm dyslexic, so it took a long time.

You're seeing something that you've seen a thousand times and you just like it. There's nothing wrong with that but it's not a revelation. It's not a surprise. It's comfort.

Here is the alphabet of the pulsing apocalypse that is fatherhood, a book in love with what words, like parents, create: beauty, terror, awe.

If you think it's worth writing a book about then that means you suspect that you're not the only one. You suspect that it has something to do with the larger patterns of your culture.