That was the source of my vanity and my cowardice: always I believed everyone was watching me.

Somewhere, sometime I'd stopped expecting my father to father.

And I felt more like me than I ever had, as if the years I'd lived so far had formed layers of skin and muscle over myself that others saw as me when the real one had been underneath all along, and I knew writing- even writing badly- had peeled away those layers, and I knew then that if I wanted to stay awake and alive, if I wanted to stay me, I would have to keep writing.

Writers have to be careful not to confuse personal attention with the attention that's going towards the book.

I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice.

As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes.

I think the writer's job is to paint the gray because no life is clearly defined.