I love revising. If you demystify the process, it comes down to four strategies: what can I do to make the draft better; what should I cut out to make it stronger; what do I need to do to clarify it; and finally, what should I reposition.

I think I write fiction for the opportunity to get beyond the limits of my own life.

I am a plodder, I make an appointment with my computer everyday and I have no idea where I am going.

Eastern Connecticut is very different from Western; we're more liverwurst than pâté, more bowling than polo.

When I was a kid, I was surrounded by girls: older sisters, older girl cousins just down the street... except for an older boy named Vito who threw rocks. Each year I would wish for a baby brother. It never happened.

If you risked love, it took you wherever you wanted to go. If you repressed it, you ended up unhappy.

I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true.