And I do think that great fiction, even when it's comedic, has an urgency or an inevitability to it, a sense that the writer absolutely had to write this particular story in this way.

The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams.

Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

A potential leader who obeys God is in much better position to succeed than one who ignores God's will for his life

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.

My favorite part of podcasting is running my mouth for an hour. The only time I dont like it is when Im off. Then that hour feels like a day and a half.

There was no one in particular I really tried to copy.

The porpoises said hello to Molly. She told them all her teeth were green.

In the afternoon I watch the clouds drift past the bald peak of Mount Tukuhnikivats. (Someone has to do it.)

To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.

We are infinitely more than our limitations and afflictions.

I see myself working, making a living and doing projects that I'm passionate about, regardless of the medium.

How can we expect novelists to be moral, when their trade forces them to treat every end they meet as no more than an imperfect means to a novel?