Art doesn't have to do anything. It just has to be there for the fierce pleasure we take in doing it.

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.

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

What good are insights? They only make things worse.

I'm moving to Nevada. Either there or kill myself.

If we're lucky, writer and reader alike, we'll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we'll ponder what we've just written or read; maybe our hearts or intellects will have been moved off the peg just a little from where they were before. Our body temperature will have gone up, or down, by a degree. Then, breathing evenly and steadily once more, we'll collect ourselves, writers and readers alike, get up, "created of warm blood and nerves" as a Chekhov character puts it, and go on to the next thing: Life. Always life.

You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk.