Immanence, or complicity, allows the writer to be a kind of shock absorber of the culture: to reflect back its 'whatness,' refracted through the sensibility of his consciousness.

All good books wind up, I think, with the writer getting his teeth bashed in.

A sports writer is a stylist of some kind. He is trying to convey mood and character and emotion.

I used to feel that everything I know I learned through my lifelong struggle with stuttering; I now feel this way about my damn back.

The reigning mythology of the Northwest is obviously nature, and the reigning mythology of the Northeast corridor is culture.

I began as a fiction writer - I had written three novels in my 20s and 30s. But as my work has gravitated towards literary nonfiction, or lyric essay or poetic essay, whatever you want to call it, I'm constantly beating my head against the wall 'cause I'm teaching a genre that's no longer that exciting to me and that I'm no longer practicing.