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.

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.

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.

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.

You thought that you were the permanent part of your own experience, the net that held it all together - until you discovered that there were many selves, dissolving into one another so quickly over time that the buildings and the trees and even the pavement turned out to have more substance than you did.

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

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.