It took me seven years of writing before I published my first story. And then, the publications trickled in over the next five years.

The least trusted testimony in a court of law is eyewitness testimony. We are simply not good reporters of facts that happen to us, or in front of us. But that's not the same as knowingly lying.

I think the act of lying can be separated from the genre of memoir. Though often times, people are unaware of their own subjectivity.

The biggest thing was that second person allowed me to trick myself into revealing more about myself. It gave me an authorial distance to get closer to the action and emotions, if that makes sense.

I like the fact that second person puts the reader in the story. It makes them, whether they like it or not, complicit in the action.

I think every narrator is an unreliable narrator. In its classic definition - an unreliable narrator is one who reveals something they don't know themselves to be revealing. We all do that.

I like a text that reminds the reader its a text sometimes.

I'd say the music influences the writing - the music and rhythm of the prose - much more than the writing influences the music.

You can't hide behind the guise of fiction. No matter how autobiographical a fictional scene is, you can always tell the reader - in protecting yourself - that you made it up.

I don't teach narrative theory by itself anymore, but I kind of use it when critiquing student manuscripts. So, it works its way in there, whether I like it or not.

My teaching career started with me teaching comp at a very small school in Buffalo. And I was terrible at that point. They never should have hired me.

You do not need permission to be you. Just be your authentic, brilliant, one-soul-only self. You are a marvel. Act like it!

Come to Me, all you labor and are heavy laden, and I’ll give you rest! For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

Family is just accident. . . . They don't mean to get on your nerves. They don't even mean to be your family they just are.

I believe in the perfect outcome in every area of my life! Expect to be successful! Expect to win!

I think there are too many smart people pursuing internet stuff, finance, and law. That is part of the reason why we haven't seen as much innovation.

About the meanest thing you can say about a man is that he means well.

Smoking cigarettes seems to alarm peace activists much more than voting for Reagan does.

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.

We must study as hard how to live well as how to preach well.

Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.