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

A short story is a writer's way of thinking through experience... Journalism aims at accuracy, but fiction's aim is truth. The writer distorts reality in the interest of a larger truth.

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

Nothing on earth in fiction is less interesting than characters under the influence of alcohol.

Our salvation never comes in the form we would have chosen.

Let good people sin. Give virtue to rotters.

Obscenities are too often used for shock value, as a kind of shorthand for real expression of emotion. You've got to scale down your monstrosities. A scream is not a discovery.