I don't think there's a shortage of material in the world. Or in my head. I just pray for continued good health, because I've got other stories to tell.

I looked back at some of my earlier published stories with genuine horror and remorse. I got thinking, How many extant copies might there be, who owns them, and do they keep their doors locked?

After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble.

Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation.

In the end it all came down to companionship, to friendship, to sacrifice, to compromise.

If there's an enduring theme in my work, it's probably the effects of class on American life.

Who but an English professor would threaten to kill a duck a day and hold up a goose as an example?