We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do-we do it all the time.

Never underestimate the meanness in people's souls... Even when they're being kind... especially when they're being kind.

One drop of hatred in your soul will spread and discolor everything like a drop of black ink in white milk.

I want my stories to move people ... to feel some kind of reward from the writing.

I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.

He never wanted to be away from her. She had the spark of life.

It's certainly true that when I was young, writing seemed to me so important that I would have sacrificed almost anything to it ... Because I thought of the world in which I wrote -- the world I created -- as somehow much more enormously alive than the world I was actually living in.