Life is chaotic and meaningless, and you have to find your meaning. You must find the answer, you can't just live. That's the point of story: helping you find your meaning in life.

It seems to me that the civilized human being is a skeptic someone who believes nothing at face value.

The material of literary talent is words; the material of story talent is life itself.

What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.

The students realize that it's their life I'm talking about: it's out of balance, they're struggling to put it into balance. How are they going to do it?

Of the total creative effort represented in a finished work, 75 percent or more of a writer's labor goes into designing the story designing story tests the maturity and insight of the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart. Story demands both vivid imagination and powerful analytic thought.

Never sleep with anybody who has more problems than you do.