My job is to have empathy and curiosity for things that I've never done. Also, I'm a person whom people talk to.
America beats on you so hard the whole time. You are constantly being pummeled by other people's rights and their sense of patriotism.
We can't get them all in the church. There were hundreds of people waiting outside. They come. They come from Lord knows where, rain or shine, freezing or warm.
Humans generally get out the gist of what they need to say right at the beginning, then spend forever qualifying, contradicting, burnishing or taking important things back. Yor rareley miss anything by cutting most people off after two sentences.
When people realize they are being listened to, they tell you things.
I'm not one of those people who as a writer lets my characters tell me what they want to do or call to me or seek me. I go seeking for things, using them as an agent, really.
I'm dyslexic. If you can reconcile yourself to not being able to burn through books, which you shouldn't any way, you can slow the whole process down. Then, because of my disability, there is more for me in imaginative literature than there is for other people.
I'm trying to cause people to be interested in the particulars of their lives because I think that's one thing literature can do for us. It can say to us: pay attention. Pay closer attention. Pay stricter attention to what you say to your son.
Things happen when people are not where they belong, and the world moves forward and back by that principle.
Some people want to be bank presidents. Other people want to rob banks.