You have to be kind of clued into them, they are a world of their own, and most people find them disappointing because the best short stories are not constructed like novels.

I teach one semester a year, and this year I'm just teaching one course during that semester, a writing workshop for older students in their late 20s and early 30s, people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to bring it to completion.

But as my brother was doing his research for a book about my father, it became his opinion that the most influential anti-semitism my father encountered when he was growing up was from Jews, because his relatives were German Jews, and doctors.

Like so many writers I started writing stories because I didn't have much time for anything else.

One can imagine a world without essays. It would be a little poorer, of course, like a world without chess, but one could live in it.

When we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests, and that falling and dying are for quitters. We live on the innocent and monstrous assurance that we alone, of all the people ever born, have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever

Most of us dont live lives that lend themselves to novelistic expression, because our lives are so fragmented.