I've felt pressure to produce long fiction for as long as I've been writing fiction. There's just an incredible bias in the publishing industry toward novels and away from short stories. They're seen as D.O.A. in the marketplace, which seems nuts to me, given that various collections done smashingly and deservedly well in economic terms.

Art arises from loss. I wish this weren't the case. I wish that every time I met a new woman and she rocked my world, I was inspired to write my ass off. But that is not what happens. What happens is we lie around in bed eating chocolate and screwing. Art is what happens when things don't work out, when you're licking your wounds. Art is, to a larger extent than people would like to think, a productive licking of the wounds.

You've got all these parents who are projecting their pathologies of fear onto their kids and those kids are understandably messed up. Tragedies happen and that you have to allow kids to experience their own fear and guilt and sorrow. It's the cover-up that really screws people over. Unfortunately, America specializes in cover-ups.

At the end of night, before you close your eyes, be content with what you've done and be proud of who you are.

I'm going to proportion more time to organizing and taking action and less time to passively consuming news that is dispiriting me. Part of this will be to get off social media. I know social media is just a tool, but we've been using it in a way that has transformed us from a nation into an audience, passively spectating our own ruin.

But the real life of a writer resides in showing up at the keyboard every day, with the necessary patience and mercy, and making the best decisions you can on behalf of your people. It’s a slow process. It often feels hopeless, more like an affliction than an art form. Most of us will have to find our readers one by one, in other words, and against considerable resistance. If anything qualifies us as heroic, it’s that private perpetual struggle. Put down the magazine, soldier. Forget about the other guy. Remember who you are.

Obama said, basically, "I wouldn't let any son of mine play football, though I do watch." And that struck me as remarkable! It's like he's saying, yeah, let some other set of parents or guardians put their boys up for that kind of punishment (and for my amusement). But not mine! It's just abject hypocrisy from a guy who should know better.