“I suspect that I’m not alone when it comes to altering my surroundings depending on how I feel at any particular moment: diving into a specific book, immersing inside a particular movie, devouring certain foods or humming to just the right song.”

“My mother says that some books are good no matter when you read them, and some are good at a particular moment; they come into your life at just the right time.”

“I’m allergic to abstraction. Especially in my first two books, I was telling the story of the transformation of urban America, especially in the so-called “rust belt,” and of the decline of the industrial city and the rise of post-industrialism. But I could only tell it as a series of locally inflected stories about particular characters at particular moments in particular landscapes. They are almost always creative characters: Writers, or musicians. These characters are often filled with some urge, and I am basically writing the biography of that urge. How does the urge to play the guitar find expression in certain styles, which are attached to certain institutions, and then to the city?(Source: article discusses "The Art of Storytelling" in The European.)”

“I thought about the bigger picture of my life, and about the people—and particularly the guys—I would encounter during my lifetime. How would I ever know when that moment was right, when expectation met anticipation and formed … connection?”

“I'm just an individual who doesn't feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I'm working for me.”

“It's no wonder we don't defend the land where we live. We don't live here. We live in television programs and movies and books and with celebrities and in heaven and by rules and laws and abstractions created by people far away and we live anywhere and everywhere except in our particular bodies on this particular land at this particular moment in these particular circumstances.”