I agonize over things like this - the order of things, section titles, all this architectural sort of stuff. Takes me years to figure out..

I used to be surprised and a little annoyed when characters would reappear in my mind, itching to be in another story. Now I realize it's part of the….

One story I've been trying to write for years, and haven't been able to finish, is about a face I saw, just a glimpse of a face, in a max security pr….

I feel like there are too many words in the world, and I think silence is so much more powerful than the glut of words..

But this is exactly why I read--and don't belong to a book group--because reading is the most individual thing there is. Why collectivize it? Didn't ….

If a novel or a story works, you don't stop thinking about it; it doesn't truly end..

I try not to read my own books just because I would rather read somebody else..

I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done..

I'm pretty tight - I rewrite, in some cases, 70 to 80 times before I show it to people..

As a professor I can't teach writing..

Lot of stories in deceit, how characters deceive other people, but most of all, I think, how they deceive themselves. We're not as tricky as we think….

I sometimes wonder if our memories are a myth. We think we remember, but we are remembering the story and not the actual event?.

My characters tend to be people who are looking back on a life lived, their joys, their regrets..

I have a friend who teaches yoga (or is it pilates?), and she said that I don't seem to live in the moment. And I said, "Exactly!" I'd go nuts if I l….

My first book came out again - the re-issue from 2001. I was rereading it to make sure that I didn't miss any mistakes, and I didn't know who had wri….

I think what I'm after, a lot of the time, is just honesty. What accounts for the fact that the stories we tell ourselves - the story we carry around….

We don't want emotion handed to us - that's not emotion. You have to build and come from the reader's soul..

A novel is like a long relationship and a short story is a brief one that lingers - it lingers powerfully and maybe more powerfully. I think that's t….

I think some writers should wait for something to say..

What you can do with a short story that you can't do with a novel is punch someone in the gut, in the best of ways..

I think that maybe happy families don't need stories the way unhappy families need stories. Maybe they're too busy living that they don't actually st….