I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.

I can't listen to music when I'm writing. I like music best in a car or on the train.

I think that the practice of writing every day was what made me remember that writing doesn't have anything to do with publishing books. It can be totally separate and private - a comforting thought.

In America you make your plans and then they happen.

Most good fiction also has a character the writer seems to know more deeply than anyone can actually be known in life, but a few unusual writers can make something great without that.

I think, in general, it's better not to respond to reviews of your work.

I like it when someone gives me a new book of poetry by a poet I haven't read.

Research for fiction is a funny thing: you go looking for one piece of information, and find something altogether different.

Alice Munro is a particular kind of short story writer in that she writes long, character-driven short stories.

If somebody says your story is only published because you look nice in the photo, that maybe spurs you on to write.

What a gentle soul you are?

Let me talk to my mother. She is listening from the above.

If you've never been in a dumpster coated with industrial waste while someone stabs you with a piece of sharpened rebar, then you probably wouldn't understand.

We know the only way to reimagine our government is to reimagine who is leading it.

We are in a big, fat, ugly bubble. And we better be awfully careful.

We are in the ordinary position of scientists of having to be content with piecemeal improvements: we can make several things clearer, but we cannot make anything clear.

History is a record of the incessant struggle of humanity against ignorance and oppression.

Even as we continue to carry the banner of civil rights and environmental justice, we've also got to focus on many, many people - for them, life starts with a good job.

To those that feel down and out…Let today be the day you stand up & fight. Let today be the day you say I won’t quit.

Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.