… she gave me a look that deftly combined tenderness with revulsion. To this day the memory of that look still visits me like a Jehovah’s Witness: uninvited and tireless.

I was in the hospital and I was paralyzed and I went through all of these things. I've had all of these crazy experiences and jobs in my life, but I never really write about them because I've already told them as stories to friends. For me, the process of writing is the process of invention. But the hospital story felt told already. There was nothing to discover in the telling of it. The discovery had to be in the form. It wasn't really the unfamiliarity of the form, it was more about a way incorporate invention and how to realize it imaginatively.

There are a lot of artists that return to the same subject. Whether it's the natural subject, or the focus or the subconscious focus of their entire lives, it often is repeated.

I've never had a mentor personally of any kind. It feels like, generally, in the writing world or the art world, it's more of a thing in America, because you have writing programs, which we don't have. You have these amazing writers who are teachers. I never did a writing program so I never met a writer until I was published. I guess I can't really explain my compulsion for writing these kind of mentor characters.

The moment seemed endless, but it was probably only half that.

Sometimes I think the human animal doesn't really need food or water to survive, only gossip.

Friendships are an unforseeable burden.