I Think People Have Come To Expect

I Love The Idea That More People Would Read Short Fiction. I Think It's Such A Humanizing Form. It Softens The Boundaries Between People.

I Think The Trick Of Being A Writer Is To Basically Put Your Cards Out There All The Time And Be Willing To Be As In The Dark About What Happens Next As Your Reader Would Be At That Time. And Then You Can Really Surprise Yourself. There's That Cliche, "no Surprise For The Writer, No Surprise For The Reader!"

I'm Not Sure I Would Call It Agony But There Is A Kind Of Cyclic Frustration. You Get One Story Right And Then Here Comes Another One. When Does That End? What I'm Trying To Do Is Get It To End Right Now, By Recognizing That That Cycle Is Writing. That Is: Trying To Understand The Frustrations And Setbacks (and Agony) As Part Of A Bigger Chess Game You Are Playing With Art Itself.

I Don't Use The Word Lightly, In Fact, I Don't Use It At All, But Ben Marcus Is A Genius, One Of The Most Daring, Funny, Morally Engaged And Brilliant Writers, Someone Whose Work Truly Makes A Difference In The World. His Prose Is, For Me, Awareness Objectified-he Makes The Word New And Thus The World.

Art Is Not Some Inessential Frippery - It Is The Nation's Means Of Intelligently Regarding Itself. To Cripple Or Stigmatize The Arts Is To Doom One's Nation To A Life Of Incuriosity, Dullness, Literalness And The Worst Kind Of Rank Materialism.