What I've become convinced makes a writer are the days you hate it, the days you'd rather stick those pencils in your eyes. Sometimes I almost punish….

I usually do at least a dozen drafts and progressively make more-conscious decisions. Because I've always believed stories are closer to poems than n….

On the last drafts, I focus on the words themselves, including the rub of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet even at this ….

It’s ever been the way of the man of science or philosophy. Most folks stay in the dark and then complain they can’t see nothing.” – Snipes (185).

I learnt how to hunt rattlesnakes with an eagle for Serena..

John Lane has long been recognized as one of the South's finest poets and memoirists. This debut establishes him as one of our finest novelists as we….

What made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting small things first... it's amazing how much you could forg….

Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision, the ability to sa….

Don't love anything that can be taken away..

We had some good times at school. I didn't know how good those times were until I left, but I guess that's the way of it.

Others can make us vulnerable and the sooner such vulnerabilities are dealt with the better.

I wouldn't mind being a track and field coach..

One thing's sure and nothing surer. The rich get richer and the poor get- children.

Faulkner came from my region and taught me how you could write about a place..

Cool-Hand Luke' is one of my favorite movies..

You got one choice at the beginning but if you didn't choose right, things got narrow real quick..

I think I had a particular moment when I was 15 years old. I read 'Crime and Punishment,' and that book just, I think, more than any other book made ….

I think writing a poem is like being a greyhound. Writing a novel is like being a mule. You go up one long row, then down another, and try not to loo….

The woman doesn't look up. It's as if she's deaf. Maybe she is. Maybe she's like the Cambodian women I've read about, the ones who witnessed so many ….

I live in Cullowhee, North Carolina. That's where I teach, at Western Carolina University. That region is where my family has lived for a long time a….

A place where something so terrible had happened shouldn't continue to exist in the world.