The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.

I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.

You write by sitting down and writing. There's no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he's disciplined, doesn't matter.

Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime

... we are all terribly alone no matter what people say.

We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.