Everyone would tell me they couldn't identify with sexual abuse. No one says they can't identify with the tales of the Greek gods and goddesses because they don't live on Mt. Olympus.

Each source that I read, I would look through the bibliography and the footnotes, and use that as a map for the next thing I would read.

Every now and then, you find a book that feels like it was keyed to your DNA.

Writers aren't born, they're made - from practice, reading, and a lot of caffeine.

I have lived for a long time inside a series of coincidences that most people would find implausible in a novel.

PhD, MFA, self-taught - the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success.

Whenever people say a coincidence in a novel is implausible, I think, Do I have a story for you.

I had a naiveté that I would remember the things that I had written already, but I was getting lost in the forest of my own ideas and having to find my way out.

The myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.

As I get ready to buy a new computer, I'm stunned at all the many micro drafts, of different chapters and scenes and whatnot, that litter the hard drive.

I grew up treating a life as a writer as a career in letters, one devoted to many kinds of writing. And so it seemed normal to study both fiction writing and the literary essay as an undergrad.

Q: When is the perfect time? A: Who can say, but probably somewhere between haste and delay - and it's usually most wise to start today.

Some days we lose all at once and somedays we get all back at once. But either way, Accept it.

When you listen to nature, it may still be difficult to live a life, but it's inspiring.

Great wants proceed from great wealth; but they are undutiful children, for they sink wealth down to poverty.

These are the days of bootleg love.

If one person gains spiritually, the whole world gains

Set too many goals and keep adding more goals. Goals have a tendency to be realized all at once.

Hey." Tod squeezed my hand to draw me out of my thoughts. "I think death looks good on you.

Larger sums may be an advantage at some cases and a disadvantage at others.

Poetry contains nothing haphazard.