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" 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. "

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" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There is this idea of 'north,' and if you're from Michigan and you wandered the Upper Peninsula, you know what it feels like. The sky has a particular vibe, a coldness, stretching into the upper reaches of Canada. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The wonderful thing about being an American writer is you've got this vastness to draw from. "

" 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. "

" Folk songs, whatever else they might be, are mainly craft. "

" 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. "

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

" I write first drafts by hand, often out of the house somewhere, and then, when I've got a draft, type it up and let it sit, sometimes for a long time, and then when I'm ready, I work on revision. "

" 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. "

" Typically, I spend a lot of time - mostly in the morning - kind of drifting, reading, walking down along the river, looking at photographs, or even driving around. Then, if I'm lucky, I get to work in the early afternoon, one way or another. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "