A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want to or not. It calls you back.

We're all entitled to our superstitions.

Kelly Link's prose is conveyed in details so startling and fine that you work up a sweat just waiting for the next sentence to land. This is why we read, crave, need, can't live without short stories.

Being taken seriously, for a young writer, is a wonderful form of encouragement, but at the same time, I don't think one should ever feel like attempting a kind of artistic endeavor is beyond your scope just because of age or inexperience.

I do no writing while I'm in Belgrade visiting my grandma.

At the end of the day, despite all the other great things that literature does in society and in a person's life, I think that we read to escape. And I think that place, more than anything, provides that escape quickly, if an author is engaged with the place.

In my earliest memory, my grandfather is bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers.