Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies.

We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.

Nothing is more comical than seriousness understood as a virtue that has to precede all important literature

Skill alone cannot teach or produce a great short story, which condenses the obsession of the creature; it is a hallucinatory presence manifest from the first sentence to fascinate the reader, to make him lose contact with the dull reality that surrounds him, submerging him in another that is more intense and compelling.

Before going back to sleep I imagined (I saw) a plastic universe, changeable, full of wondrous chance, an elastic sky, a sun that suddenly is missing or remains fixed or changes its shape.

The short-story writer knows that he can't proceed cumulatively, that time is not his ally. His only solution is to work vertically, heading up or down in literary space.

The mysterious does not spell itself out in capital letters, as many writers believe, but is always between, an interstice.