All I think of ever is that I love you.

interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which every one has some vague right at the end

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.

A writer like me must have an utter confidence, an utter faith in his star. It's an almost mystical feeling, a feeling of nothing-can-happen-to me, nothing-can-touch-me.... I once had it. But through a series of blows, many of them my own fault, something happened to that sense of immunity and I lost my grip.

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

I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife.