It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.

Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.

You're...writing for other writers to an extent-the dead writers whose work you admire, as well as the living writers you like to read.

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

She won't give him back his look.

What good are insights? They only make things worse.

Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different.