Writing about unknown people means I spend a lot of time arguing to the reader about why it's worth knowing about them. That's challenging, but then the piece is pure discovery.

I remember, when I was a kid, watching my mother jam herself into her girdle - a piece of equipment so rigid it could stand up on its own - and I remember her coming home from fancy parties and racing upstairs to extricate herself from its cruel iron grip.

I've tried a lot of different apps to manage Twitter on my phone (I use Hootsuite on my laptop), but I think the official Twitter app is really good.

I never thought very many people in the world were very much like John Laroche, but I realized more and more that he was only an extreme, not an aberration - that most people in some way or another do strive for something exceptional, something to pursue, even at their peril, rather than abide an ordinary life.

I've used Twitter now and again to try to figure something out; it's an amazing resource. But I think you have to use it judiciously: it's a self-selected group, so it's important not to start thinking of it as the whole world.

I don't like hiking with convicts carrying machetes.

The genius of a folk melody or story is not the feeling that it's original but quite the opposite - the feeling that it has existed all along.