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Above all, a well-imagined story is organized around extraordinary human behaviors and unexpected and startling events, which help illuminate the commonplace and the ordinary.

The telling of stories creates the real world.

Stories and narratives are one of the most powerful things in humanity. They're devices for dealing with the chaotic danger of existence.

Novels are one of the few remaining areas of narrative storytelling where one person does almost all of the creative heavy lifting.

The stories I write are often literal to events that have happened or observations that I've made, and sometimes they're fantastical.

Stories are amazing and powerful because they can resonate with people depending on their needs and experiences and speak truths we need to hear in that moment in time.

What makes a story a story is that something changes. Internal, external, small or large, trivial or of earth-shattering importance. Doesn't matter.

The bright future is that readers are accepting more varied forms of stories.

As a matter of fact, I deliberately look for the mundane, because I feel these stories are ignored. The most influential things that happen to virtually all of us are the things that happen on a daily basis. Not the traumas.

That's the trouble with stories. People start out fantastic. You think they're extraordinary, but it turns out as the work goes along, they're just average with a good education.