You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?.

That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window..

When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself..

The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world..

A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so..

My circumstances of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction necessitated the short story form..

Booze takes a lot of time and effort if you're going to do a good job with it..

That was in Crescent City, California, up near the Oregon border. I left soon after. But today I was thinking of that place, of Crescent City, and of….

The smooth stones you pick up and examine under the moon's light have been made blue from the sea. Next morning when you pull them from your trouser ….

Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read. Fought against it for a minute. Then looked out the window at the rain. And….

Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick..

Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read..

There are significant moments in everyone's day that can make literature. That's what you ought to write about..

In short, everything about his life was different for him at the bottom of that well..

You're...writing for other writers to an extent-the dead writers whose work you admire, as well as the living writers you like to read..

I am a cigarette with a body attached to it.