The story knows itself better than the writer does at some point, knows what's being said before the writer figures out how to say it.

I think the writer has to be responsible to signs and dreams. If you don't do anything with it, you lose it.

Writers when they're writing live in a spooky, clamorous silence, a state somewhat like the advanced stages of prayer but without prayer's calming benefits.

A writer starts out, I think, wanting to be a transfiguring agent, and ends up usually just making contact, contact with other human beings. This, unsurprisingly, is not enough.

Good writing never soothes or comforts. It is no prescription, neither is it diversionary, although it can and should enchant while it explodes in the reader's face.

But who knows what good might come from the least of us? From the bones of old horses is made the most beautiful Prussian Blue.

The story knows itself better than the writer does at some point, knows what's being said before the writer figures out how to say it.