Time is anonymous; when we give it a face, it's the same face the world over.

The fictional eye sees in, through, and around what is really there.

The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much, Laurel thought.

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

She read Dickens in the spirit in which she would have eloped with him.

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.

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.