It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming of themselves like grass.
— Eudora Welty
Beware of a man with manners.
Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.
The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.
Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.
Greater than scene is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is a single, entire human being, who will never be confined in any frame.
Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.
All serious daring starts from within.
I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.
Writers and travelers are mesmerized alike by knowing of their destinations.
To imagine yourself inside another person... is what a storywriter does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.
Never think you've seen the last of anything.
A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.
The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.
A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.
