But he stays by the window, remembering that life. They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else—the cold and where he'd go in it—was outside, for a while anyway.

You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?

A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so.

I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.

There's literary creation and literary business. When I first got something accepted, it gave my life a validation it didn't otherwise have.

He wondered if she wondered if he were watching her.

My heart is broken,” she goes. “It’s turned to a piece of stone. I’m no good. That’s what’s as bad as anything, that I’m no good anymore.