I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done.

I've spent a lot of time in prisons, first doing legal work and later, teaching.

Like no other writer in contemporary American literature, Brock Clarke has a way of looking at us, I mean looking straight at us--warts, lots of warts, and beauty and hypocrisy and love, too, the gamut. And hes done it again in this brilliant The Happiest People in the World, a novel that is as hilarious and thought-provoking as it is ultimately, deadly, deadly serious. I for one am grateful hes out there--watching our every move.

Maybe my work is somewhat divided into family stories, things I know intimately, and then everybody else in the world - the strangers who I am totally fascinated with.

I agree with the Lev Tolstoy quote completely, but I also feel like there's more to it. What is a happy family and an unhappy family? We're probably both of those things at the same time.

I sometimes wonder if our memories are a myth. We think we remember, but we are remembering the story and not the actual event?

If a novel or a story works, you don't stop thinking about it; it doesn't truly end.