It made no sense, the way Americans sometimes went bananas over certain people for absolutely no reason, as if they were just drawing names out of a hat.

It always gives me a comfort, watching the TV late at night, thinking about all the other people around Ohio watching the same old movie, maybe even thinking the same old thoughts. I picture them curled up on their couches in their living rooms, and all the lonely little sounds of the night drifting in through their window screens.

I don’t think my book is any more shocking than if I went out right now and brought back your local newspaper and found a story that happened around here yesterday or the day before that’s just as shocking as anything in my book.

The Oxys filled holes in me I hadn’t realized were empty. It was, at least for those first few months, a wonderful way to be disabled. I felt blessed.

I remember a class I taught at Ohio State where I assigned a Mary Gaitskill story, which really wasn’t that bad, and I had this one girl refuse to read it. But better that reaction than no reaction at all.

When I first started out, I was trying to write stories about nurses and lawyers and a lot of people I didn’t know anything about, and they just weren’t working.

The way I saw the characters these things just happened naturally. At the same time – and I know it’s probably not apparent when you read the book – but I really tried to hold back because I didn’t want it to become a cartoon.

I took a correspondence course with a guy at Ohio University. He gave me ten exercises, and one of them resulted in the story “Bactine.” It pleased me a lot more than anything else I’d ever done, so I kept messing around and by the time I got to Ohio State I’d written maybe eight stories.

Michael Koryta is an amazingly talented writer, and I rank The Prophet as one of the sharpest and superbly plotted crime novels I’ve read in my life.

A lot of people get the wrong impression, think there’s something romantic or tragic about hitting bottom.