Novels shouldn’t aspire to answer questions, and I wouldn’t presume to offer advice about love or marriage in any case. What’s fascinating to me abou….

If somebody says your story is only published because you look nice in the photo, that maybe spurs you on to write..

You thought that you were the permanent part of your own experience, the net that held it all together - until you discovered that there were many se….

I can't listen to music when I'm writing. I like music best in a car or on the train..

I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels..

Research for fiction is a funny thing: you go looking for one piece of information, and find something altogether different..

In America you make your plans and then they happen..

Alice Munro is a particular kind of short story writer in that she writes long, character-driven short stories..

I'm not a big Woody Allen fan, but thought 'Husbands and Wives' was great..

Most good fiction also has a character the writer seems to know more deeply than anyone can actually be known in life, but a few unusual writers can ….

I think the few writers who influenced me most in writing short stories are Alice Munro and Grace Paley. They're very different, and I can't do what ….

I think that the practice of writing every day was what made me remember that writing doesn't have anything to do with publishing books. It can be to….

I like it when someone gives me a new book of poetry by a poet I haven't read..

I think, in general, it's better not to respond to reviews of your work..

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way..