If you are protected from dark things then you have no protection of, knowledge of, or understanding of dark things when they show up.

When you say words a lot they don't mean anything. Or maybe they don't mean anything anyway, and we just think they do.

There are a number of paths that lead to this place. I have been avoiding them for some small time, now.

I took delight in hurling books across the room if I knew I would not be reading the second chapter. Then I’d go and pick them up again, because they are books, after all, and we are not savages.

And he waited. It was only for a few seconds, but it felt like a small forever.

The best advice I can give on this is, once it's done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before. If there are things you aren't satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that's revision.

He sighed. It was a long sigh, weary and worldly-wise. The kind of sigh you could picture God heaving after six days of hard work and looking forward to some serious cosmic R&R, only to be handed a report by an angel concerning a problem with someone eating an apple.