A short story is a writer's way of thinking through experience... Journalism aims at accuracy, but fiction's aim is truth. The writer distorts reality in the interest of a larger truth.

Our salvation never comes in the form we would have chosen.

Sometimes, in that darkness, there is a single act of love, some selfless gesture, an aspiration, and we see that it's not been all waste, all hopeless, and we can ... well ... go on.

Uninvited criticism is insult.

Obscenities are too often used for shock value, as a kind of shorthand for real expression of emotion. You've got to scale down your monstrosities. A scream is not a discovery.

Let good people sin. Give virtue to rotters.

Nothing on earth in fiction is less interesting than characters under the influence of alcohol.

Plot does not simply move with time, but spreads out conceptually in metaphorical space.

Using language like jungle growth isn't the solution to telling a story.

There's something about a parenthesis in fiction that puts one off, saying, "It's me, moi, jumping in now."

What a strange thing it is to recognize a sound like the shriek of a wounded animal, when you've never heard the shriek of a wounded animal.

Welcome, let’s all prepare to be whisked to the magical land of candy. Be warned, candy is very addicting and at Jubilee’s the candy is the tastiest in the world,

Resentments are like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die.

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.

I've always tried to be the person who says things no one else wants to say. I've always kept it in house, as opposed to going to the papers.

All day my mind drifts off into fantasies and little stupid jokes.

One negative person can create a miserable office environment for everyone else.

Like a page dipped in ink, your cuff's in my coffee. / You have something to tell with unbuttoned sleeves.

There’s a greatness in not caring what people think

Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough.

No dream is ever to big. No dreamer is ever to small.