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.

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.

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.

I have an MFA in writing. It is debatable if they are right for everyone, but I had a mentor who really changed my life, so it worked for me.

Intelligence minus purpose equals stupidity.

Only I had dry eyes, a dry heart.

The thought that is billed at the price of fear and flattery is as inconsolable as that which is paid for at the price of gold. - On Fear and Thought.

AH I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

I worked at the Steel Company Of Wales when I was 17. My job was to supply tools to the guys working the blast furnaces.

I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all he has. It is the pearl of great price to by which the merchant will sell all his goods.

It makes it really hard to just go to a dinner party because, in my work life, I'm surrounded by the funniest people, ever. I'm really spoiled. I laugh a lot, in my day.

Happiness is the most important thing.

The songs worked as a different kind of rhetoric, one that could reach the fence-sitters.