The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have to get it in your blood, not in the head.

He and the girl had almost nothing to say to each other. One thing he did say was, 'I ain't got any tattoo on my back.' 'What you got on it?' the girl said. 'My shirt,' Parker said. 'Haw.' 'Haw, haw,' the girl said politely.

She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.

To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.

A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell them to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.

Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.

At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.