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I'm actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it's the place I know best.
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I'm a time person. It's the one discipline I manage.
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Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit.
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I rarely read or buy a book because of a review.
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Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth not so apparently devoid of angels.
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I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now.
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I think about the sentence a long time, and then I write it. I don't revise it once it's set down.
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Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.
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I think the trouble with artists or chefs who whine about criticism is that if you love the good reviews, you have to at least read the bad ones.
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I wasn't taking myself seriously as a novelist, and then it became my day job.
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We are delightfully trapped by our memories. I can't drink a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape Vieux Telegraphe without revisiting a hotel bistro in Luzerne, Switzerland, where I ate a large bowl of a peppery Basque baby goat stew. A sip and a bite. A bite and sip. Goose bumps come with the divine conjunction of food and wine.
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I do have trouble with titles.
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I can write anywhere.
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I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.
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I like grit. I like love and death. I'm tired of irony.
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I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.
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Other than fishing and a little bird-hunting, all I do is write.
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You have to temporarily be the character in order to understand him. It's sort of what they used to call 'shape-shifting.'
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I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was.
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I used to have this illusion that time and remote areas prepare you for the world. Our moms used to think that kind of thing. Well, it doesn't prepare you for the world at all!
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Sometimes, discomfort is very uncomfortable. Anybody can get occasionally tired of it, and then it can change fast, where it's comfort that disturbs you.
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Either you can do what others want, or you can do what you want to do. That's an easy call.
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I'm outdoors a lot, so I get dark. Guess who gets stopped? I've been pulled over, and they ask, 'Where are you from?' I say, 'Montana.' They say, 'Are you sure? And I say, 'I'm reasonably sure I'm from Montana, but you know, this is a dream life.' You start on this shtick with them and it's fun.
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Your kids inevitably want to move where they had their vacations when they were younger.