I think maybe short stories operate in some of the same ways that poems do. They frame single or small moments and elevate those. They give you insight into more minor dramas maybe, dramas between smaller groups of people.

I like hearing other writers just about the way they approach writing. It gives me energy for my own work. It's weird; I'm always taking notes about fiction when I'm listening to people talk about craft.

I think about and study people. I think I make people uneasy sometimes by being so curious as to why they do what they do. I find myself thinking about this fairly obsessively, and I can't stop until I've found an answer.

I'm a little hesitant to make my characters sentimental or to risk having the work labeled sentimental. It's something that I resist as a reader, and I don't resist it in life. I'm not an unmoved person by any stretch, but I think I don't want, I guess, to indulge those kinds of things sometimes in fiction. I can't tell you why exactly.