You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.

Was love then like a bag of assorted sweets passed around from which one might choose more than once? Some might sting the tongue, some invoke night perfume. Some had centers as bitter as gall, some blended honey and poison, some were quickly swallowed. And among the common bull's-eyes and peppermints a few rare ones; one or two with deadly needles at the heart, another that brought clam and gentle pleasure. Were his fingers closing on that one?

For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, and that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

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

If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place.

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

Wonderful ... I was up all night reading it, laughing and crying out in horror.