I like a text that reminds the reader its a text sometimes.

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'd say the music influences the writing - the music and rhythm of the prose - much more than the writing influences the music.

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.

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.

I would like to think she turns around and goes home and does one thing differently that day because of what she has imagined, and again the day after that, and the day after that.

See the openness of the ocean. Now feel that your mind is more open and welcoming than that.

Maybe the way we have learned to look has changed in the last 25 years, and the exotic is much more acceptable. There are many artists now, younger artists, who work out of the exotic

I collect books and I have some really, really old schoolbooks, and God is mentioned on every single page.

Exes should never, never go out with or marry other people but should remain celibate to the end of their days in order to provide you with a mental fallback position.

Study the science of art and the art of science.

Here I am and there is my body dancing on glass In accident time where there are no accidents You have no choice the choice comes after

Problem-solving is hunting; it is savage pleasure and we are born to it.

If I ventured in the slipstream between the viaducts of your dreams, where immobile steel rims crack and the ditch in the back roads stop. Could you find me?

In World War II in Germany, we had a ration for one U.S. soldier, or one allied soldier for every twenty inhabitants. The ratio in Iraq is about one for a hundred and sixty.