I teach one semester a year, and this year I'm just teaching one course during that semester, a writing workshop for older students in their late 20s and early 30s, people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to bring it to completion.
I try to help people become the best possible editors of their own work, to help them become conscious of the things they do well, of the things they need to look at again, of the wells of material they have not even begun to dip their buckets into.
It's probably why I'm a short story writer. I tend to remember things in the past in narrative form, in story form, and I grew up around people who told stories all the time.
Work for most people is really very social, and the actual thinking is often done in community.
Perhaps that is why the novel flourished in England. You had these communities that would stay put and people would see one another all the time and cause one another to change and have the opportunity to observe the changes over time.
Because I don't have to be careful of people's feelings when I teach literature, and I do when I'm teaching writing.
Anybody can be very destructive in that position without at all meaning to be, and I know that I have been inadvertently destructive in the past for certain people on certain occasions.
As you look at the flow of Muslim fundamentalism, or fundamentalism in various areas and various religions, they all play on the people who have very little.
We have three billion people, half the world's population today, living on less than two dollars a day.
There are some people who have the quality of richness and joy in them and they communicate it to everything they touch. It is first of all a physical quality; then it is a quality of the spirit.
I don't think anyone is more intrinsically holy. People experience God in many ways; and it seems to me that God does what the rest of us do: He chooses the means that best gets His message across.
Idolizing is a strong word, though. I'm happy that people respond well to the work I'm doing now. If anyone admires what I'm doing in any way, then I'm really proud of it.
There are so many people I would love to work with, like Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Gary Oldman - maybe Tom Cruise. I wanna play his brother in something - so call my agent!
You can't do your work worrying about what people will think of it - you kind of just have to do your work.
Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.