I live in Brooklyn. By choice. Those ignorant of its allures are entitled to wonder why.

Many universities have asked me to come for a semester but I don't want to do it because I don't have the patience.

When the prisoner is brought down from Death Row he steps from the elevator directly into a "holding" room that adjoins the witness room. There are two cells in this "holding" room, two, in case it's a double execution. They're ordinary cells, just like this one, and the prisoner spends his last night there before his execu­tion in the morning, reading, listening to the radio, playing cards with the guards.

When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult and disciplining form of prose writing extant. Whatever control and technique I may have I owe entirely to my training in this medium.

She sounds the way bananas taste.

It takes a lot of bad writing to get to a little good writing.

I'll wager at the end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are -- her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone - just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.