Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

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.

Tall people have a real advantage in the world.

There are things you do when you're writing that are so fun to do it's almost like they're private jokes that are amusing to you but no one else is going to enjoy them nearly as much and you worry you're going to have to take them out in the end.

Of course, any work you do as a sporting person, a football coach or any coach, if it is good work, you've got to have something - a championship - to show for it.

The reason sport is attractive to many of the general public is that it's filled with reversals. What you think may happen doesn't happen. A champion is beaten, an unknown becomes a champion.

We live in a social world now, and there's no denying the power that Twitter has yielded across all verticals. Sports is a perfect fit because fans are highly emotionally charged and things happen quick.

I appreciate how central religion is in the lives other people, but it has never resonated with me. I imagine this is how lots of people feel about things I love, like rap music or, it turns out, sports.