I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.

The first thing we see about a short story is its mystery. And in the best short stories, we return at the last to see mystery again

The challenge to writers today, I think, is not to disown any part of our heritage. Whatever our theme in writing, it is old and tried. Whatever our place, it has been visited by the stranger, it will never be new again. It is only the vision that can be new; but that is enough.

Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures.

To open up the new, to look back on the old may bring forth like discoveries in the practice of art.

When I read, I hear what's on the page. I don't know whose voice it is, but some voice is reading to me, and when I write my own stories, I hear it, too.

The mystery lies in the use of language to express human life.