But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.

Everything was such a damned nice idea when it was an idea.

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

Life is never all one thing. It bounces around. Certainly, my own life has.

Let the story tell itself.

Fiction, maybe art in general, is a tentative, uncertain enterprise; it's not science, it's an exploration, but you never find much in the way of answers.

you're never more alive than when you're almost dead.