I don't fire up the prose. I just tell it straight and don't fool around with it.
Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back i...
I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.
Happiness. It comes on
A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house.
Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different.
Happiness. It comes onunexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,any early morning talk about it.
There isn't enough of anythingas long as we live. But at intervalsa sweetness appears and, given a chanceprevails.
Your face, your mouth, your shoulderinconceivable to me now!Where did they go? It’s likeI dreamed them. The stones we broughthome from the beach lie face upon the windowsill, cooling.Come home. Do you...
V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.' Notice the 'glimpse' part of this. First the glimpse. Then the glimpse gives life, turned i...
My heart is broken, she goes. It’s turned to a piece of stone. I’m no good. That’s what’s as bad as anything, that I’m no good anymore.
All this, all of this love we're talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I'm wrong. I want...
Write what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?
I want to hide from it, that’s what I want to do. I want to just close my eyes and let it pass by. Let it take the next man.
Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.
I hate tricks. At the first sign of a trick or gimmick in a piece of fiction, a cheap trick or even an elaborate trick, I tend to look for cover. Tricks are ultimately boring, and I get bored easily,...
Drinking’s funny. When I look back on it, all of our important decisions have been figured out when we were drinking. Even when we talked about having to cut back on drinking, we’d be sitting at the k...
My circumstances of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction necessitated the short story form.
You see, this happened a few months ago, but it's still going on right now, and it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.
My lungs are thick with the smoke of your absence.