You write the way you think about the world. My motto in times of trouble - and I'm speaking of life, not writing - is 'no humor too black.'
Sadness was something I was thinking about in my life outside of writing, so it wormed itself into whatever I wrote.
Life likes jokes; life is constantly making jokes, even at the most inopportune moments.
I wanted to acknowledge that life goes on but that death goes on, too. A person who is dead is a long, long story.
There was a time in my life when I wasn't sure I'd ever write a short story again because I had started writing novels, and I am fundamentally a lazy person, and the fact is that a novel is a lazy person's form, really. That is, you can amble; you can digress.
but you can't spend your whole life hoping people will ask you the right questions. you must learn to love and answer the questions they already ask.
It's a happy life, but someone is missing. It's a happy life, and someone is missing.