Long fiction is wonderful and you can lose yourself in it as a reader and as a writer, but short stories don't allow the same kind of immersion. Often the best stories hold you back and make you witness them. This may be one of the reasons some people reject the form. That and the fact that they are harder work to read. A story will not let you get comfortable and settle in. It is like a stool that is so small that you must always be aware of sitting.

Life has always been a matter of putting one's feet down carefully

Maruman does not loll.

Cracks especially. You have to be careful of the cracks.. Sometimes they are disguised as something else. A doorway, or a smile or even a winking eye. And if you fall through them, you never know were you will end up.

Short stories do not say this happened and this happened and this happened. They are a microcosm and a magnification rather than a linear progression.

Sometimes success demands a certain refined insanity.

Impatience is not the least of your faults, Malik, it is a kind of greed and someday it may see you undone.