I never listen to music when I write.
I love to both give and receive very old books.
Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.
But my favorite band is Curbside Life, out of Chicago.
I’m grateful for a lot of things. One is not being a drunk wreck. Or losing all four limbs in some ridiculous East Village bus accident that I was so destined for.
Because I’ve lived in one room my entire life, working at the same table that you use to pay bills at and eat at. It’s going to be nice to have actual space.
I’ve just finished my next collection, Possible Side Effects, and I’m now working on a collection of holiday stories as well as a memoir about my relationship with my father.
My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day.
Marriage is overdone. As long as there are people, people are going to find it interesting.
As a writer, you can’t allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward.
There’s not enough of me left over.
I’m always prepared for the worst.
My brother was born without taste or the desire to be professionally lit.
I just look at her and she creeps me out. She looks like she would eat a baby. Not that she’s fat. She just looks hungry in some dangerous way that can’t be explained. She’s always so nice and friendly. Exactly the disposition of a baby killer.
You can make almost anything a learning or positive experience. I think I offer a good example of how to make the most out of what life gives you and how to keep moving on.
I was like a packet of powdered Sea Monkeys and they were like water.
To me, these people were as exotic as animals in a zoo. I’d never seen anything like them. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be one of them or simply live among them taking notes and photographs.
In the same way that a tornado rips the roof off a double-wide trailer, leaving the occupants dazed and staring at the clouds from the splinters of what used to be their living room, it was over.
I don’t think writers -in general- ever achieve the fame of movie stars. For the simple reason that only a fraction of the population reads. But I guess there are exceptions.
It was like living in a new house. I saw the undersides of tables, walked through the tangle of chair legs. It would be good to be a dog, I thought. You would feel safe surrounded by all of these leggy objects that never tried to run away.