The smooth stones you pick up and examine under the moon's light have been made blue from the sea. Next morning when you pull them from your trouser pocket, they are still blue.

Remember Haydn's 104 symphonies. Not all of them were great. But there were 104 of them.

Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.

You have to have been in love to write poetry.

A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.

The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.