The first story I wrote was called 'Days,' and I have very little affection for it.

I had written a story. I wrote the story out of some desperation, really, and I didn't know I was writing a story, and it took me years. And when I finished, a friend of mine had the idea that the story should be read as a monologue in a theater.

I'm a very spoiled writer. I need to be indolent, to waste a lot of paper. I'm inefficient.

I like the eclipses, the synaptic jumps of short stories. The reader has to participate very actively in the experience.

It's almost uncanny to receive a prize named in honor of Bernard Malamud. I must have been in my early teens when 'The Magic Barrel' was published and I first read it.

Of course I want to have a deliciously seductive story on the surface which will keep people engaged and amused, but primarily, I'm interested in other things. It's the texture of any given moment that fascinates me: what is really going on between people or in somebody's mind.