I think that writers have natural canvases, and my canvas, even in short stories, often seems to be the scope of a life..

I don't pare down much. I write the beginning of a story in a notebook and it comes out very close to what it will be in the end. There is not much d….

Everybody goes through a lot of the same things, and I talk about those, and that's the key. You have to connect with your audience, and I might take….

I've always chosen the roles that aren't the direct lead because I like being a very poignant character in the story, rather than being seen in every….

When we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise..

We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us..

Stories are flight simulators for our brains..

I'm writing, I'm using language, I'm using that language to tell stories and even more so to get ideas across. And I just love that, and I've always ….

I write human stories. I write about people. Not as a product of their environment. But from the stance that everybody is made of the same thing..

There really is only one ending to any story. Human life ends in death. Until then, it keeps going and gets complicated and there's loss. Everything ….

Have endless patterns and repetitions accompanying your thoughtlessness, as if to say let go of that other more linear story, with its beginning, mid….

You can't tell a story linearly if you want people to understand..

You can’t change the past. You can’t even change the future, in the sense that you can only change the present one moment at a time, stubbornly, unti….

The reason for such an “unreasonable” attitude with me is that I am not at all sure what will happen to me after death. I have good reasons to assume….

Well, it's more of a sane life to be part of an ensemble! I find that the work can be more specific too and I have to really make sure I know where I….

But when I see a story on welfare on television, they only show black people..

Tell your story because your story will heal you and it will heal someone else..

Short story characters, mine anyway, are usually driven by impulse, not so much by their histories and the choices that they have to make..

Whoever wants to tell a variety of stories ought to have a variety of beginnings..

I'm not so good at just throwing out facts and figures and education and all that. I tell stories to captivate, that give people... that touch people….

I don't call magazines and let them know about things so they can write stories..