I'm inspired by dogged endurance and people who do as much as they say, and never tell me too much about what they're going to do. In no particular order, and with glaring omissions, I enjoy the following writers: Sinclair Lewis, Bobbie Ann Mason, Amy Tan, Marguerite Duras, Hari Kunzru, William Trevor, Junot Diaz, Tobias Wolfe, Raymond Carver, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Victor LaValle, and Bill Tester--mostly because of the way he reads aloud.