We even talked like Hemingway characters, though in travesty, as if to deny our discipleship: That is your bed, and it is a good bed, and you must make it and you must make it well. Or: Today is the day of the meatloaf. The meatloaf is swell. It is swell but when it is gone the not-having meatloaf will be tragic and the meatloaf man will not come anymore.

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

Reasons always came with a purpose, to give the appearance of a struggle between principle and desire. Principle had power only until you found what you had to have.

There are writers who do start doing the same thing again and again and almost inevitably fall into self-parody.

Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.

There’s no right way to tell all stories, only the right way to tell a particular story.

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.