One of my goals is to allow readers to see my characters and the world they inhabit as vividly as possible.

Faulkner came from my region and taught me how you could write about a place.

On the last drafts, I focus on the words themselves, including the rub of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet even at this stage I'm often surprised. A different ending or a new character shows up and I'm back to where I began, letting the story happen, just trying to stay out of the way.

I wouldn't mind being a track and field coach.

I spent summers with my mother's parents in Arkansas, where religion felt very present. My grandmother was Baptist, and my grandfather was Methodist. Double Southern whammy.

I believe that we are missing a great opportunity. We as Republicans are not really emphasizing what brings us together, and that's conservative values: love of the country. Love of family. Personal responsibility. Hard work. Optimism. Those are the things that we should be communicating to Latinos, and we're doing that very poorly.

My parents married in 1959 and came to Amsterdam on honeymoon. That was a huge thing, event, for them. Now my children fly off for the weekend to Riga, Prague, or Barcelona.

We have home videos that are really great tape on my parents being hysterical. So I think I always knew that my parents were funny, so I think that I always felt comfortable using comedy in my real life.