I can't listen to music when I'm writing. I like music best in a car or on the train.

I can't listen to music when I'm writing. I like music best in a car or on the train.

I think the few writers who influenced me most in writing short stories are Alice Munro and Grace Paley. They're very different, and I can't do what they do, but reading them gives me hope that I'll learn something from them.

I think, in general, it's better not to respond to reviews of your work.

I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.

Most good fiction also has a character the writer seems to know more deeply than anyone can actually be known in life, but a few unusual writers can make something great without that.

In America you make your plans and then they happen.