Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good?

An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.

Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.

All those years on the psychiatrist's couch and suddenly the couch is moving. Good God, she is on that couch when the big one hits. Maidy didn't tell you, but you know what her doctor said? She sprang from the couch and said, "My God, was that an earthquake?" The doctor said this: "Did it feel like an earthquake to you?

I know when a story is finished when there is not a single thing more I can think to do to it. And since I know at the start what the last line will be, I know when I've reached that point as logically as I can that it's finished. As for the rewriting-it's not foolproof, of course, but if you're honest about having thought of every possibility and you still come back to what you have, what more can you do?

He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.

I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.