[My father] had spent his own short time like a priest in charge of a relic, forever expecting the blessed blood to liquefy.

She and Marie were Montreal girls, not trained to accompany heroes, or to hold out for dreams, but just to be patient.

Success can only be measured in terms of distance traveled.

Like every other form of art, literature is no more and nothing less than a matter of life and death. The only question worth asking about a story — or a poem, or a piece of sculpture, or a new concert hall — is, Is it dead or alive?

Writing is like a love affair: the beginning is the best part.

I wanted to live in Paris and write nothing but fiction and be perfectly free. I had decided all this had to be settled by the time I was thirty, and so I gave up my job and moved to Paris at twenty-eight. I just held my breath and jumped. I didn’t even look to see if there was water in the pool.

A short story is what you see when you look out of the window.