I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You're grateful for these different chances.

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

You don't have to destroy me. Do you?

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgement.

The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone.

I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about.