Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty.

Great short stories and great jokes have a lot in common. Both depend on what communication-theorists sometimes called "exformation," which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient.

We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life "outside" the story changes the story.

Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.

You have decided being scared is caused mostly by thinking.

But if I decide to decide there’s a different, less selfish, less lonely point to my life, won’t the reason for this decision be my desire to be less lonely, meaning to suffer less overall pain? Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?

I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.