I wasn't doing much work when I was using and drinking. I have friends who did it (work), but I wasn't one of those people.

My teaching career started with me teaching comp at a very small school in Buffalo. And I was terrible at that point. They never should have hired me.

I'd say the music influences the writing - the music and rhythm of the prose - much more than the writing influences the music.

I have an MFA in writing. It is debatable if they are right for everyone, but I had a mentor who really changed my life, so it worked for me.

The least trusted testimony in a court of law is eyewitness testimony. We are simply not good reporters of facts that happen to us, or in front of us. But that's not the same as knowingly lying.

I like the fact that second person puts the reader in the story. It makes them, whether they like it or not, complicit in the action.

There's something known as "memory conformity," also known as "social contagion of memory," which refers to a situation where one person's telling of a memory influences another person's account of that same experience.