I'm interested in the limits of personality, in the possibility of change, and the saving power of art. Do powerful works of art raise our consciousn….

By examining characters lighting the way to hell, as it were, are readers spared iniquity? Are stories a heeded warning, or merely an entertainment? ….

You know, as I've grown older, my ideas about sin have changed. I used to believe that sins were things you did, but I don't think that now. I think ….

Once when I went over my work with my Washington University professor, the late great Stanley Elkin, he pointed to a passage of mine and said: Stop v….

Perhaps it's simply the dual nature of marriage, the proximity of violence and love..

People think of travel, of movement, as a kind of reprieve from life. But they're wrong. Movement isn't a reprieve. There is no reprieve. Movement is….

There was a long stint during my childhood after I gave up on being a pro football player - were talking sixth grade here - that I strongly considere….

I'll never forget reading Chekhov's "A Doctor's Visit" on a train to Hawthorne, New York, and I got to the end - the scene where the patient says goo….

I studied Hitchcock and Josef von Sternberg under Richard Dillard at Hollins, and that year under his tutelage just completely rewired my brain. Both….

Hardcover and paperback forever. Someone carve that into a tree..

I became a writer through drawing first and then a comic book obsession - Marvel Comics, in particular. I invented a world of superheroes starting in….

I can't imagine turning into one of those codgers who no longer reads fiction. I'm regularly stirred by it and suffer no anxiety of influence. Influe….

Simply put, you can read a story in a single sitting and hold it all in your mind. You can experience all of its rhythms, beginning to end, during th….