I tend to think that the onus is on the writer to engage the reader, that the reader should not be expected to need the writer, that the writer has to prove it. All that stuff might add up to a kind of fun in the work. I like things that are about interesting subjects, which sounds self-evident.

Names don't matter, CVs don't matter, previous publications don't matter at all, because, in a certain way, the ideal is for someone to come completely out of left field. And still, of course, it is hard to say no to a writer who matters a lot to you and who you know matters to your readers.

I don't know what people should be reading. Only you know what you should be reading.

For me the question that you have to ask, about any magazine, is whether it's needed, whether it's publishing things that no one else could publish, or publish equally well. So there's that.

I’m a reader who uses fiction as a way of worrying about life.

If you wrote about sex the way Jim [Salter] writes about sex in nonfiction, you would be a sociopath.

The real threat to reading isn’t the time we spend hanging out, it’s the time we spend online.

In general, short stories are less read than before, they're less published than before and, not surprisingly, they're less taught than before.

I love having people around who are better interviewers than I am and who can make the time to do a really great job. All of the interviews that we've published are with people who really interest me.

I've never thought that it made sense to put something out that I didn't actually find really fun to read. Or, if not fun, engaging. My tastes are whatever they are, but I may be a little bit afraid of certain kinds of density. I may get turned off by certain kinds of show-offyness.

So, short stories have an even harder time, because they tend to get read during the day, between other things. They're interstitial. And yet the content of short stories tends to be very much nighttime content.

We've never had a giant circulation. And we've always been a magazine for writers and for sophisticated readers. We've never had to run stories that would appeal to a million people. And what you end up with is a kind of tradition that might have staying power - the cockroach after armageddon.

I have the feeling that the magazine can reach many more people than it reaches and has something to offer that not everyone knows who should know it. That's why we're starting an app, and that's why we do the blog. But editorially, I think it's mainly a matter of keeping your eyes peeled. You just really don't know what's going to come along.

Chekhov's stories are about the moment that a life goes off the rails and the price that will be paid - forever. That's a typical Chekhov story for you. Something that you're used to lying in bed worrying about at four in the morning, before you have the psychic defenses to kid yourself and tell yourself to get up and shower and go to the office.

You can go back and try to generalize, but then you end up saying things that all editors say about everything that ever gets published. Something about voice, about urgency, about actually having a story to tell.