What a strange thing it is to recognize a sound like the shriek of a wounded animal, when you've never heard the shriek of a wounded animal.

Sometimes, in that darkness, there is a single act of love, some selfless gesture, an aspiration, and we see that it's not been all waste, all hopeless, and we can ... well ... go on.

Using language like jungle growth isn't the solution to telling a story.

You must get beyond divertissement, sketch, anecdote, the interesting moment. You must get to the mystery of human personality. What is the line of the story that leads us to a point where we see or intuit something we haven't before?

Plot does not simply move with time, but spreads out conceptually in metaphorical space.

There's something about a parenthesis in fiction that puts one off, saying, "It's me, moi, jumping in now."

Let good people sin. Give virtue to rotters.