I learned I could be miserable anywhere in the world. I learned I really was an American.

I think the major device for me is that narrator's voice. I'm always trying to find a different kind of form to tell whatever story it is, and I wish that weren't so, because it drives me crazy.

It wasn't that I wanted to be an artist. But when I took my first drawing class with the painter Doug Ohlson, I could never finish a drawing.

People are less focused on the story, and more on how the story is told.

You can think everything is dire, but you act as if there's possibility. I see children coming into the world as an expression of this. Sometimes, not always - it can just be somebody that wasn't on the birth control pill or didn't have access to abortion. But I usually see a wanted child as a sign of optimism, and I like that.

I think many writers really believe that being published is a traumatic experience.

If I have to work on something for too long, then it must be wrong. At a certain point, if I've worked on a sentence for about an hour, then I realize that it's probably not the right sentence and means I'm trying to make something fit that's ungainly.