First, a gorgeous breakfast: just everything you can imagine from flapjacks and fried squirrel to hominy grits and honey in the comb...we're so impatient to get at the presents we can't eat a mouthful.

If Francoise Sagan hadn't written a book called A Chateau in Sweden, I would certainly write a short story called A Chateau in Puerto Rico. And I may yet.

And in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.

Half the people who snuff people, that's what they want: recognition. Get their picture in the paper.

When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult and disciplining form of prose writing extant. Whatever control and technique I may have I owe entirely to my training in this medium.

I'm not a philosopher.

Some prisons don't allow guitar because the strings can be detached and used as weapons.