Tom Barbash quotes:

Susan Rebecca White has a keen sense for how her characters talk and think. An impressive debut.

I'll write about California someday, I imagine, but I don't know when.

When you teach, it's sometimes necessary to consciously not write for a month or two - and then pick a time in the future to sink back in. It makes you less frustrated and more in control. I do best when I give myself breaks and come back hungry.

Being a reporter took me out of myself and that shaped me as a writer.

I believe that we can access stories, and voices from those around us, more easily often than from our own imperfect memories.

I had written about a small hamlet upstate, and had been called into a meeting about my story, which, as it turned out, had upset a lot of people.

I tend to listen to my friends and family empathetically, and I try to help work through their problems from the inside. I try to adopt their thinking.

I think it's probably better to make a region your own, and then maybe you can go somewhere else, but a lot of great writers have stuck to one region.

I think narrators expect a high level of intimacy with their readers, and vice versa.

I think one's person's unlikeable is another's lovable.

I think the second, or outsider's, perspective can come as you layer a story. It's as though you've grabbed a secondary character and asked them, "What do you make of this guy?" and the hope is that the answer surprises you as the writer.

I think the voice can carry a story.

I think writers tend to hear a different message from the ones our friends and acquaintances intend. We see what's revealed, which makes us dangerous.

I went back into the older stories and reworked them, because I became a better writer over the years and could spot flaws. I loved having another chance to make them stronger, and to bring them closer to me, made them less like a greatest hits compilation, and more like something written in the same extended burst.

I'm always relearning things I thought I'd learned for good a while back.

I'm suspicious of epiphanies, because they so rarely last.

My characters tend, if wounded, to be emotionally resourceful. Often they're in that way station between when loss happens and when it can be fully comprehended. In the meantime they're fighting to get something back, and occasionally they prevail in surprising ways.

Of course I'd sometimes have characters from downstate living upstate, but it took a while for me to start writing about where I grew up.

One good thing the teaching has given me is the ability to read and revise my own work.

When I teach, I try to assign writers from whom I can learn.