It seems to me now that the deep structures [in writing] are often subconscious and set in childhood.

It's gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.

You become a different writer when you approach a short story. When things are not always having to represent other things, you find real human beings begin to cautiously appear on your pages.

Something in me was changed by Lincoln in the Bardo, and the great sublime/grotesque risk of [George Saunders'] ghosts was a part of it.

When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn't like to admit to any intimate relation with what I was writing.

This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.

In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.