Fish," the old man said. "Fish, you are going to have to die anyway. Do you have to kill me too?

I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

I decided to stop drinking with creeps. I decided to drink only with friends. I've lost 30 pounds.

I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.

There is nothing you can do except try to write it the way that it was. So you must write each day better than you possibly can and use the sorrow that you have now to make you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always remember the things you believed because if you know them they will be there in the writing and you won’t betray them. The writing is the only progress you make.

A wine shop was open and I went in for some coffee. It smelled of early morning, of swept dust, spoons in coffee-glasses and the wet circles left by wine glasses.

You could omit anything if you knew that the omitted part would strengthen the short story and make people feel something more than they understood