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 writer's life stands in relation to his work as a house does to a garden, related but distinct.

All lives are interesting; no one life is more interesting than another. Its fascination depends on how much is revealed, and in what manner.

... appeals to memory were never perfectly answered.

Decide what the rest of your life is to be. Whatever you are now, you might be forever.

I still do not know what impels anyone sound of mind to leave dry land and spend a lifetime describing people who do not exist. If it is child's play, an extension of make believe - something one is frequently assured by people who write about writing - how to account for the overriding wish to do that, just that, only that, and consider it as rational an occupation as riding a bicycle over the Alps?

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