To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self.

You think you have some stable talent which will show no matter what you're writing, and if it doesn't seem to be getting across to the audience once, you can't imagine that moment when it suddenly will.

Short stories demand a certain awareness of one's own intentions, a certain narrowing of the focus.

Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignation with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards- the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed.

When you lose someone, a whole lot of perfectly normal circumstances suddenly take on different meaning. You see it in a different light. You wonder if they knew. I wondered. Doctors have told me that people do have a sense of their own approaching death.

He was an outsider who lived by his ability to manipulate the inside.

I don't write for catharsis; I have to write to understand.