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.

I would like to make sleeping my new hobby, except that I'm too tired, really, to have a hobby. But a girl can always dream.

When I was a kid, Halloween was strictly a starchy-vegetable-only holiday, with pumpkins and Indian corn on the front stoop; there was nothing electric, nothing inflatable, nothing with latex membranes or strobes.

I don't turn to greeting cards for wisdom and advice, but they are a fine reflection of the general drift of the culture.

I rarely listen to commercial radio, and when I do, I'm shocked by how many ads there are, and how annoying they are, and how bad the radio station usually is.

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 am dismayed to realize that much of the advice I used to parcel out to aspiring writers has passed its sell-by date.