It's hard to write sex because it's hard to write desire, period.

It's hard to write sex because it's hard to write desire, period.

If you cross-section anyone's life from one angle and then another, what constitutes goodness looks different each time. It's not an absolute.

I don't think virtue has a downside. I think human nature does.

When you write, you're supposed to go stand somewhere else for a while, see things from a perspective that's not in line with your own reflexive truths.

You don't really have a story until you discover the moment when the pressures on a character force a sudden, abrupt shift in direction and she falls through the net that has so far held her in place.

Chekhov used to correspond with aspiring writers, and once he gave this advice to Maxim Gorky when he was encouraging him to pare his wordy sentences: "When someone expends the least amount of motion on a given action, that's grace." The short story, by definition, embodies this notion of grace, because it requires such forceful compression to achieve its effects.