A novel is a daily labor over a period of years. A novel is a job. But a story can be like a mad, lovely visitor, with whom you spend a rather exciting weekend.

Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself.

To write a short story, you have to be able to stay up all night.

Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.

I've come to realize that life, while being everything, is also strangely not much. Except when the light shines on it a different way and then you realize it's a lot after all!

This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic.

We were in dialogue that was about something other than what we were saying.