A story ... has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places.

I don't always, or even usually, read stories from beginning to end. I start anywhere and proceed in either direction. A story is not like a road to follow, it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while.

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing. Not the 'what happens,' but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

So what about me? Would I always have to find a high horse? The moral relish, the rising above, the being in the right, which can make me flaunt my losses.

Why is it a surprise to find that people other than ourselves are able to tell lies?