"I like landscape, I guess. It's kind of a game to see how you can describe it." — David Means

I'm not at all interested in simply reporting what's here right now, or cranking out an entertainment device that's going to touch the widest number of people. I'm interested in digging and excavating as deep as I can go into those small eternal moments and how they expand out, or close in, on the lives of my characters.

The more you know about Bob Dylan, the less you know. A truly enigmatic artist, Mr. Dylan's work and life offer vaporous handholds, explanations, and instructions. Attempt to grasp them, and they will only dissipate and re-form into another contexture or idea.

You can't take a story and just stretch it out - that does not a novel make.

I love novels, and I read them more than anything, but stories cut in sharp and hard and are able to reveal things in a different way: they're highly charged, a slightly newer form, and inherently more contemporary.

Those who see beauty almost too intensely can easily look mad to those who are functioning within the confines of so-called normal life.

America turns its back on the mentally ill. It likes to think it doesn't, but it does.

Undergraduate writers seem to be, in a way, more open to letting themselves just write.

A short story collection can be as exciting as a novel. It is a real complete experience, like when you listen to a real good recording, a Beatles record, and there are so many good songs.

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I like landscape, I guess. It's kind of a game to see how you can describe it.