I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story.

It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing.

And as a writer now, I want to save Linda's life. Not her body--her life.

I guess we're really brothers, aren't we? Don't know what that means, except it means that some of the same things we remember.

A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand up on those mysteries.

Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write.

...precisely where the land touched water at high tide, where things came together but also separated.