Laurel could not see her face but only the back of her neck, the most vulnerable part of anybody, and she thought: Is there any sleeping person you can be entirely sure you have not misjudged?

It is our inward journey that leads us through time – forward or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge. Our living experience at those meeting points is one of the charged dramatic fields of fiction.

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

Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else ... Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories.

Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.

Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one.