It's not right for one friend to do all the giving and the other to do all the taking: that's not real friendship.

If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.

I wasn't particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don't have to die the next.

All right, then, I thought: here I am in the bottom of a well.

When the fire goes out, you'll start feeling the cold. You'll wake up whether you want to or not.

We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died longe ago.Even so, a faint glimmer of that warm memory still claimed a part of my heart. And when death claim me, no doubt I would walk along by that faint light in the brief instant before being flung once again into the abyss of nothingness

She was truly a beautiful girl. I could feel a small polished stone sinking through the darkest waters of my heart. All those deep convoluted channels and passageways, and yet she managed to toss her pebble right down to the bottom of it all.