We have to admire the world for not ending on us.

She likes the people with the endurance to tolerate the drudge, the ones who know that pain is a requirement, not a curse.

Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get the language right.

I think it is our job, as writers, to be epic. Epic and tiny at the same time. If you're going to be a fiction writer, why not take on something that means something. In doing this, you must understand that within that epic structure it is the tiny story that is possibly more important.

One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.

The luxury of age was the giving up of vanity.

I don't really know what an adverb is. A dangling participle? That sounds really rude. I don't know what character is, really. Plot seems vaguely juvenile to me. It's all about language, it's all about how you apply it to the page.