The writer cultivates, extends, raises and inflates his imagination, sure that this is his destiny, his usefulness, his contribution to the understanding of good and evil. As he inflates his imagination he inflates his capacity for evil.

The short story is the literature of the nomad.

Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.

Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction.

Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house.

The poet or storyteller who feels that he is competing with a superb double play in the World Series is a lost man. One would not want as a reader a man who did not appreciate the finesse of a double play.

To be an American and unable to play baseball is comparable to being a Polynesian and unable to swim.