Humans generally get out the gist of what they need to say right at the beginning, then spend forever qualifying, contradicting, burnishing or taking important things back. Yor rareley miss anything by cutting most people off after two sentences.

Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.

Our ex-wifes always harbour secrets about us that make them irresistable. Until, of course, we remember who we are and what we did and why we are not married anymore.

I'm kind of a distractible guy.

If sportswriting teaches you anything, and there is much truth to it as well as plenty of lies, it is that for your life to be worth anything you must sooner or later face the possibility of terrible, searing regret. Though you must also manage to avoid it or your life will be ruined.

Some people think that writers are innately solitary and that there's a kind of romance to that solitariness. I tend to think that what writers really want to do is get accepted into things. They want to get accepted into society, into culture, into intelligentsia, into the fun. Writing is their mechanism, their instrument, for doing that.

I grew up in Mississippi being told it was a great place, but not feeling that. When I finally began reading seriously, literature showed me something about where I was from which was worthwhile.