Bobbie Ann Mason

Writing about where I was from and the people I knew was not something that would have occurred to me early on, because like so many Southerners of that period - the Sixties - I rejected those things when I went north. ”

I often say flippantly that the short story is... shorter; you can be done with it more easily. It's much less of a commitment of time and energy than a big project like a novel or long nonfiction book. ”

Most of the time I was in the Northeast, I lived in the country, and I think that helped me to discover my material for writing. ”

Bruce Springsteen's world is where everybody did these terrible jobs, if they had jobs at all, and he wanted something better. ”

During the Cold War, workers proudly contributed to national defense, but the carelessness and haste in handling toxic waste created a nightmare of pollution for subsequent generations. ”