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" I'm a relatively optimistic kind of guy. "

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" I knew for years I wanted to write a novel that addressed the personal trauma of my older sister, who suffered - and still suffers - from mental illness. For a long time I imagined - and I know it's absurd - that she was an indirect casualty of the Vietnam War. "

" I think most short story writers, at one time or another, over the course of several books, naturally skirt near the edge of one genre or another. "

" Wars never simply end, not for those in combat and not for the culture, and one way or another, they shape-shift from generation to generation. "

" It's better to know your story than not to know. "

" I'm not sure if a writer should talk about themes. Themes arrive out of the deeper structure and concerns, but to me, the main thing is getting it down right, writing about specific characters in specific predicaments, and finding a way to be true to the story itself, not only in the first burst of draft but in the revision, too. "

" I don't think you could write fiction or create art unless you are sort of a positive person. "

" I was a kid who was born and raised on Johnny Cash. My father played 'At Folsom Prison' constantly. Cash was the only thing I remember coming from our big, warm stereo console. Even then, I knew Cash was uncool. I knew he was an unhip Republican. "

" Vietnam and Iraq are part of the same national trauma and delusion; we folded the war up when Reagan became president and unpacked it with Bush. "

" Undergraduate writers seem to be, in a way, more open to letting themselves just write. "

" I studied English at the College of Wooster in Ohio, and I did an M.F.A. in Poetry at Columbia. "

" We're all building our narratives in our heads. "

" Every interaction with another person involves a dance of expectation, even when you're just passing someone in the street. Inside those moments - however brief they may be - there is a kind of anticipatory silence. "

" A kiss is often about the future and the past. A lost dream, about the discretion of the idealism. "

" I love novels, and I read them more than anything, but stories cut in sharp and hard and are able to reveal things in a different way: they're highly charged, a slightly newer form, and inherently more contemporary. "

" Americans are pragmatic; we want quick, clean, simple solutions to vast problems. The paradox is that we're a deeply confessional culture, but we're not often contemplative. "

" You can't take a story and just stretch it out - that does not a novel make. "

" Iggy Pop is a pure Michigan product - gritty, smart, but not afraid of looking stupid or foolish. His father was once a high school English teacher. I love Iggy as a physical entity, sinewy, twisty - even in old age - an embodiment of rock and roll history. "

" My characters - no, make that most characters - are seeking the shelter of narrative resolution, a place of quiet and grace. "

" A few days after 9/11, I put the old cassette of 'Born in the U.S.A.,' twisted and worn, on the car deck as I drove past West Point, across the Bear Mountain Bridge, along the Hudson River. It was the perfect moment to hear it. "

" I find the middle classes kind of boring. The middle class has kind of been beaten like a dead horse by fictional writers. It's old news, and literature is supposed to bring new news, and for me, I feel I have to go as far out as I can to try and tell the kind of stories I want to tell. "

" There's a huge distance between who I am as a regular person and what takes place in my fiction. "

" We believe in cures; we're a quick-fix country, and we drive forward, and we eat up what we have extremely fast in terms of natural resources and also ideas and intellectual property. We're kind of wilfully stupid a lot of the time, anti-intellectual. "

" Novels often thin themselves out to a watery hue - some even start that way - and at times seem to only ride along the surface of things, giving us what we already know, reporting the news that is just news. "

" A good folk song tells you something you already know, in a form you're already familiar with, on terms that were set down long before you were born - when the country was primarily windblown dust, open wagon trains, and dysfunctional towns like Deadwood. "

" A short story collection can be as exciting as a novel. It is a real complete experience, like when you listen to a real good recording, a Beatles record, and there are so many good songs. "

" I think a good story can do as much as a novel; not the exact same thing, of course, but just as much artistically. They're different beasts, but to tackle an expansive country like the United States, you're either going to write a big novel, or go in to various points on the map and write stories or poems. "

" Alice Munro is an atomic writer blasting doors into narrative time. "

" It's really hard to be a story writer - no matter how much acclaim you get - and not write a novel. "

" Everyone in my family still lives in Kalamazoo. "

" The more you know about Bob Dylan, the less you know. A truly enigmatic artist, Mr. Dylan's work and life offer vaporous handholds, explanations, and instructions. Attempt to grasp them, and they will only dissipate and re-form into another contexture or idea. "