Sometimes I'm writing for magazines on assignment, but the university has to be patient with me. I mean, during the ten-week periods that I have a class, I'm there every Thursday night or whatever it is, but sometimes that's all I'm there, because I'm somewhere else the rest of the time.

I always tell my students, about the biggest baddest things in life you must try to write small and light, save the big writing for the unexpected tiny thing that always makes or breaks a story.

I'm about going out in the world and noticing stuff, and going home and writing it down, and putting it next to other stuff I've noticed and seeing what happens.

People are supposed to accumulate, I thought, as they get older, but I seem to be sloughing off, like a person wrapped in a hundred layers of cellophane, tearing one layer off at a time, trying to get down to me.

I've always traveled. I'm a professor in a limited way. I teach one class two quarters out of four, so I get traveling done.

I've been to a lot of school and read a lot of thick books, but at my very core there's a made-for-TV-movie mentality I don't think i will ever shake.

I write well on the road. I have the energy, I have the motivation to write. I'm happy when I'm on the road.