Write about what you don't know about what you know.

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.

The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves; what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own interior life; they are individuals every time.

The novelist works neither to correct nor to condone, not at all to comfort, but to make what's told alive.

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

For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave any of us out.

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