you once liked me, didn't you?, he asked. LIKED you- I LOVED you. Everybody loved you. You could've had anybody you wanted for the asking.

The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say.

I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires.

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

She knew few words and believed in none.

It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are as significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less a moth eaten man who grinds an organ - and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory.

For what it’s worth, it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be.