I tend to listen to my friends and family empathetically, and I try to help work through their problems from the inside. I try to adopt their thinking.

I'll write about California someday, I imagine, but I don't know when.

Susan Rebecca White has a keen sense for how her characters talk and think. An impressive debut.

I think it's probably better to make a region your own, and then maybe you can go somewhere else, but a lot of great writers have stuck to one region.

I'm suspicious of epiphanies, because they so rarely last.

When I teach, I try to assign writers from whom I can learn.

I think narrators expect a high level of intimacy with their readers, and vice versa.