Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else ... Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?

One place comprehended can make us understand other places better.

The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.

Travel itself is part of some longer continuity.

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

How can you go out on a limb if you do not know your own tree? No art ever came out of not risking your neck. And risk--experiment--is a considerable part of the joy of doing.

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