Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them.

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming of themselves like grass.

What I do in the writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a human being who is not myself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set the most high.

Plots are ... what the writer sees with.

Each story tells me how to write it, but not the one afterwards.

Reading Chekhov was just like the angels singing to me.

Location pertains to feelings - feelings are bound up in place.