Everybody who undergoes a death and finds themselves grieving is obsessed with — or maybe overly focused on — the idea that they can’t display self-pity, they have to be strong. Actually there are a lot of reasons why you are going to feel sorry for yourself, but that’s your first concern.

Most death now happens in hospitals. It's been medicalized. It happens away from where we deal with it directly. And that's a huge change. At the beginning of the 20th century most people died at home. Death was much more common.

I know what the fear is. The fear is not for what is lost. What is lost is already in the wall. What is lost is already behind the locked doors. The fear is for what is still to be lost.

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

One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.

Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.

It's just a deep pleasure to read something you've written yourself - if and when you like it.