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.

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

When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.

Needing something is not the same thing as being interested in the thing itself.

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.

You think that what I've told you is an anecdote. But really it isn't. It's my whole life. It's the only story I have.

Short story characters, mine anyway, are usually driven by impulse, not so much by their histories and the choices that they have to make.