We are made to persist. that's how we find out who we are.

The beauty of a fragment is that it still supports the hope of brilliant completeness.

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

You don't teach information in a writing workshop.

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.

But a lot of writers - and I'm one of them - do tend to feel dissatisfied. It makes you a little hard to live with, but it's a goad and does keep you alert and restless.

I try to help people become the best possible editors of their own work, to help them become conscious of the things they do well, of the things they need to look at again, of the wells of material they have not even begun to dip their buckets into.