It is very difficult to teach navigation theory to someone who clings to the shore.

The principle of literature is devotion to the particulars of life.

For a short-story writer, a story is the combination of what the writer supposed the story would likely be about - plus what actually turned up in the course of writing.

your soul needs to be lonely so that its strangest elements can moil about, curl and growl and jump, fail and get triumphant, all inside you. Sociable people have the most trouble hearing their unconscious. They have trouble getting rid of clichés because clichés are sociable.

Emily was feeling the elation of conscientious hosts when they can temporarily escape a ubiquitous houseguest.

It is very difficult to teach navigation theory to someone who clings to the shore.

No work of literature is the product of only one or two conscious ideas. A story is mysteriously dense of meaning.