A novel is like a long relationship and a short story is a brief one that lingers - it lingers powerfully and maybe more powerfully. I think that's true in a lot of cases, most long-term relationships compared to some of the briefer ones - the intensity of those brief ones that end, I think a short story is kind of like that. There's a certain level of intensity that I think is different.

I've spent so many years living in one place and imaging another.

I'm pretty tight - I rewrite, in some cases, 70 to 80 times before I show it to people.

To me, and I'm sure for other writers, too, characters come back and they relive again, but what about those characters who only live for a page or two? Or for five pages or 10 pages. I like to think they're still out there - still living - but for me they kind of die, too. It's kind of sad. I don't think about them anymore unless I give them life again.

My characters tend to be people who are looking back on a life lived, their joys, their regrets.

I feel like there are too many words in the world, and I think silence is so much more powerful than the glut of words.

We don't want emotion handed to us - that's not emotion. You have to build and come from the reader's soul.