My circumstances of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction necessitated the short story form.

Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different.

Something’s died in me,” she goes. “It took a long time for it to do it, but it’s dead. You’ve killed something, just like you’d took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now.

I'm moving to Nevada. Either there or kill myself.

Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.

there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.

I've done as many as 20 or 30 drafts of a story. Never less than 10 or 12 drafts.