You know, it's sort of common wisdom among New York publishers that short story collections don't make money.

I mean, first, almost all writers these days teach because they don't make enough money publishing to live on, to support themselves - people like Tobias Wolff, Anne Beattie, Amy Hempel, Stuart Dybek; a lot of short story writers, for one thing.

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

New York is traditional New York, you know what I'm saying? It's the stomping ground of the hustlers and go-getters.

I love short trips to New York; to me it is the finest three-day town on earth.

What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss - absolute bliss - as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle into every finger and toe?...