The water reached up for her, pulled her down tenderly out of the heat, seeped in her hair and ran into the corners of her body. She turned round and round in it, embracing it, wallowing in it.

Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you

...one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture.

Reporting the extreme things as if they were the average things will start you on the art of fiction.

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.

I learned a little of beauty - enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth - and I found, moreover, that there was no great literary tradition; there was only the tradition of the eventful death of every literary tradition.

I carry the place around the world in my heart but sometimes I try to shake it off in my dreams