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

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

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.

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.

Uninvited criticism is insult.

Let good people sin. Give virtue to rotters.

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?