The short story form allows evocation, suggestion, implication. Its potency often lies in what it does not say.

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.

Laughter is a powerful weapon for it carries the light. To laugh is to defy the darkness.

Many truths which are not believed are called lies,' the Laughing Beast said. 'Mirrors do not themselves lie unless they have been enchanted. Ordinary mirrors merely reflect what is revealed to them. People lie and mirrors reflect people. If your mother feared mirrors in your land, she feared herself.

Don't you understand that wanting does not belong here, because that is what wounds, and there is never an end to it.

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

The deepest wounds aren't the ones we get from other people hurting us. They are the wounds we give ourselves when we hurt other people.