One of the most important things as a writing instructor is to provide a lot of different entry points to subjects. To not impose your own personal experience as the One True Way.

I always try to be alert to the potential for repetition, for a decaying orbit with regard to my use of technique, etc.

Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.

When you think about the complexity of our natural world - plants using quantum mechanics for photosynthesis, for example - a smartphone begins to look like a pretty dumb object.

The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?

Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.

There's also a lot of gritty Americana type of bands. I actually have a lot of Britpop on my iPod, too.

I also am not particularly risk-averse - I don't mind jumping off a cliff if I trust the people who've told me they'll catch me at the bottom.

Imbuing fiction with a life that extends beyond the last word is in some ways the goal: the ending that goes beyond the ending in the reader's mind, so invested are they in the story.

So many differing opinions and philosophies... are rarely housed under the roof of a single magazine.

Literary influences are harder for me to point to, because mostly it's a mulch of all of my past reading.

In poetry, the best way to say cuss words is to hide it behind metaphors.

When you grow up on a dairy farm, cows don't take a day off. So you work every day and my dad always said, 'No one can outwork you.'

In France, older women are considered sensual, and they don't have to mask the lines and wrinkles and erase every sign of their life on earth to be attractive and get laid.

Atomism had no absolute 'above' and 'below' and no such rulers, so favoured the undersranding of justice as an agreement amongst equals.

Please, sir, I want some more.

Some McDonald's restaurants are taking reservations on Valentine's Day. They are getting a lot of tables for one.

Everyone saves someone at least once. Just as he kills someone at least once. Even though he may not know it.

I see you try to hurt me bad. Don't know what you're up against. Maybe you should reconsider; come up with another plan. Cause you know I'm not that kinda girl. I'll just get back up again.

I choose to believe in God because it makes things better.

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.