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

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

People give pain, are callous and insensitive, empty and cruel...but place heals the hurt, soothes the outrage, fills the terrible vacuum that these human beings make.

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

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

I was always my own teacher.

I had to grow up and learn to listen for the unspoken as well as the spoken-and to know a truth.