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

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

" In 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac,' Mr. Yorke's lyrics were often unfathomable, moaned and mumbled and forced beneath the surface of the music. In 'Hail to the Thief,' most but not all of the words can be decoded after a few listens. "

" I like landscape, I guess. It's kind of a game to see how you can describe it. "

" I think that those moments before a performer plays are the moments when the potential for something to be created may - or may not - arrive. "

" You don't know what you need when you're a young writer. You can get small slivers of critical input, advice, comments, but if you're deep in the perplexity of your own process, as you should be, sorting it out in your own way, nothing is going to guide you more than small gestures of encouragement. "

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

" I'm not at all interested in simply reporting what's here right now, or cranking out an entertainment device that's going to touch the widest number of people. I'm interested in digging and excavating as deep as I can go into those small eternal moments and how they expand out, or close in, on the lives of my characters. "

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

" I was an at-home father, taking care of them for seven years when they were babies. I was one of those new-age, at-home dads. "

" 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. "

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

" The short story is kind of a precision tool. It allows me a certain type of freedom to go in and out of the American landscape, without having to commit myself to a full-length novel. I find a lot of novels out there very boring. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" What I appreciate about Radiohead's work - and it's most evident in 'Hail to the Thief' - is how the juxtaposition of narratives on the band's albums somehow creates a sense of wholeness. "

" I think all good short stories are about what it means to tell a good story. "

" 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. "

" History is delusional. Not just an illusion, it's a delusion. America is this giant country, so it has these big delusions, and history is where delusions play out. "

" I don't want to be a commentator of my own work. If you've written the story, you've said what you want to say. "

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

" 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've got deep roots in Kalamazoo, with a grandfather, Harold Allen, who was a big part of Upjohn Co. for many years as the corporate secretary and friends with W. E. Upjohn. "

" 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. "

" Those who see beauty almost too intensely can easily look mad to those who are functioning within the confines of so-called normal life. "

" 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. "

" In the days following 9/11, when we were reeling and disoriented, there was a kind of solace to be found in old recordings, and even pseudo-folk singers like James Taylor seemed to be safeguarding something, drawing back bygone days. "

" I love the nooks and crannies of the American landscape; the back roads and back alleys, the places that are still untouched by the corporate gloss, the veneer of sameness that seems to be spreading across the country. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "