I would like to give you more of my heart,but there is nothing more I can give you. I gave you everything and you crushed it into bits.

I'll just tell you what I remember because memory is as close as I've gotten to building my own time machine.

I am a toggler. I always have three or four projects going, short stories alongside novels and essays. When one project is terrible, there's somewhere else hopeful to look.

The Dark Dark is a far slower project, clearly, and that's a relief. I look for slowness anywhere I can find it.

My father thought a novel was a broken short story. There's something to that. Many of my favorite novels are novellas. The authors of brief things must reckon with the precision of language.

I became a writer because I am the youngest of six children. I listen; I observe. I'm camouflaged as a moth. Mothers are unseen. It helps me write.

In writing I found a way to make silence and to be silent. The short story has a lot more silence than the novel and that is its success.

I am surprisingly optimistic, though lately that's been hard to maintain. Art and slow, small, close gestures help remind me of my optimism.

The lion's share of my work is revision, 85%? I revise forever, combing over lines, listening and listening to them in different hours and moods so that I feel they are finally right for me.

There's a voice when I write. I speak everything aloud. My family is so accustomed to me talking to myself that often times they don't answer me when I am trying to speak to one of them.

Why do the living assume the dead know better than we do?Like they gained some knowledge by dying, but why wouldn’t they just be the same confused people they were before they died?

Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.

The threat of terrorism is not stronger than the will of the American people.

I always write from rhythm first, so if I need a song fast, I have to start there. Then I just threw some electric guitar at it.

We reach ecstasy by a contestation of knowledge. Were I to stop at ecstasy and grasp it, in the end I would define it.

I don't license everywhere. I take care of my name.

Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with.

Ladies and gentlemen, Otis Alexander Sudeikis has LEFT the building! (I'm the building)

I've always been intrigued by fighter pilots and strategy because it occurs in like, milliseconds, you know.

Nothing happens accidentally or in such a way that you cannot learn from it; you must understand this at once, for this is how your trust grows in the Lord whom you have chosen to follow.

There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.