What was more humiliating, I wondered: having to beg for someone's cold chicken bones or being offered them?

It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one.

He knows, as all the cleverest ones do, that no human being is so interesting that he can't make himself more interesting still by acting retarded at random intervals.

At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that what's required is persistence. These traits sound similar. They aren't. Confidence is what politicians, seducers and currency speculators have, but persistence is a quality found in termites. It's the blind drive to keep on working that persists after confidence breaks down.

Requesting permission from someone to be honest is really a way of accusing the other person of being so demanding or overbearing that you couldn't be honest all along.

I've been told my old city possesses a 'thriving arts scene,' whatever that is; personally, I think artists should lie low and stick to their work, not line-dance through the parks.

Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.