It's probably why I'm a short story writer. I tend to remember things in the past in narrative form, in story form, and I grew up around people who told stories all the time.

To be a writer you need to see things as they are, and to see things as they are you need a certain basic innocence.

We are made to persist. that's how we find out who we are.

One can imagine a world without essays. It would be a little poorer, of course, like a world without chess, but one could live in it.

One of the things that draws writers to writing is that they can get things right that they got wrong in real life by writing about them.

When we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests, and that falling and dying are for quitters. We live on the innocent and monstrous assurance that we alone, of all the people ever born, have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever

Like so many writers I started writing stories because I didn't have much time for anything else.