It's the form it takes when it comes out the other side, of course, that gives a story something unique--its life. The story, in the way it has arrived at what it is on the page, has been something learned, by dint of the story's challenge and the work that rises to meet it--a process as uncharted for the writer as if it had never been attempted before.

Every story teaches you how to write that story but not the next story.

At the time of writing, I don't write for my friends or myself either; I write for it, for the pleasure of it.

I wanted to read immediately. The only fear was that of books coming to an end.

The strands are all there; to the memory nothing is ever lost.

People are mostly layers of violence and tenderness wrapped like bulbs, and it is difficult to say what makes them onions or hyacinths.

A whole tree of lightning stood in the sky. She kept looking out the window, suffused with the warmth from the fire and with the pity and beauty and power of her death. The thunder rolled.