1. “A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction.”
2. “I think it’s important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.”
3. “It’s easier to die if others around you are dying.”
4. “What we fear we often rage against.”
5. “If you get the landscape right, the character will step out of it and they’ll be in the right place.”
6. “I would rather be dead than not read.”
7. “You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.”
8. “It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience prejudices, worldview and thoughts.”
9. “We’re all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.”
10. “Writing comes from reading and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”
11. “And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.”
12. “Develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading.”
13. “If you can’t fix it, you have to stand it.”
14. “I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity balance and word play of the short story.”
15. “In a rough way the short story writer is to the novelist as a cabinetmaker is to a house carpenter.”
