Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity.

The fact, and the intuition or logic about the fact, are severe coordinates in fiction. In the short story they must cross with hair-line precision.

No more pronouncements on lousy verse. No more hidden competition. No more struggling not to be a square.

What we suffer, what we endure, what we muff, what we kill, what we miss, what we are guilty of, is done by us, as individuals, in private.

The measured blood beats out the year's delay.

Your work is carved out of agony as a statue is carved out of marble.

All art, in spite of the struggles of some critics to prove otherwise, is based on emotion and projects emotion.