I think a big part of marriage is not going anywhere on those days you feel you really want to. It's like in the Barrier Islands. If you want to stay together, don't leave. I think just culturally - in the media, in movies, in books - we're trained to divorce when that first blush of sexual longing starts to fade. That's just where marriage starts.
The stories in 'Jim the Boy' are either made up or appropriated from some source other than my family. But the idea of a family telling stories to the kid, often to impart some kind of lesson, that's very familiar, and that's the way that I grew up.
The writing is the first thing that goes when I get a little down. Just like... in terms of how I feel, it's like the writing is in the top five percent, and then that's the first part that gets shaved off, and I start down a little bit.
I tell my writing students that everything is material; just pay attention.
I come from a long line of serial embellishers. Sometimes a good story's got a ghost in it; sometimes a panther chases my Uncle Bill and Fred Price home from a coon hunt.
I think irony precludes really feeling deeply about anything. I just didn't want to be that kind of writer who found nothing that wasn't worth indictment. I admire Willa Cather so much because she was unafraid to have big feelings and put them on the page. I just want to be able to believe in things.
Depression is like pushing a car up a hill. It takes all my energy to push the car up the hill. I don't have any energy left to write.
