Try to get your characters into interesting trouble. Allow your characters to misbehave. Let them stay out after 11.

I prefer short stories, but publishers would, of course, rather that writers produce novels, since novels are still more commercially viable.

You are a real find and you keep me satisfied, up to a point. After all, I'm a malcontent and you can't change that.

Forget art. Put your trust in ice cream.

[T]he astonishing purity of pain, how it will not be mixed with any other sensation.

What's agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn't care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you.

Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too.