In a rough way the short story writer is to the novelist as a cabinetmaker is to a house carpenter.

Develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading.

I didn't have a chance to buy you anything," she said, then held both closed hands toward him. Uncurled her fingers. In each cupped palm a brown egg. He took them. They were cold. He thought it a tender, wonderful thing to do. She had given him something, the eggs, after all, only a symbol, but they had come from her hands as a gift. To him. It didn't matter that he'd bought them himself at the supermarket the day before. He imagined she understood him, that she had to love him to know that it was the outstreched hands, the giving, that mattered.

If you can't fix it, you have to stand it.

And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

Change itself is what fascinates me. I am drawn, as a moth to the flame, by edge situations, by situations of metamorphosis.

I wish I knew how to quit you.