If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.
She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That’s life. It hurts, it’s dirty, and it feels very, very good.
When I write fiction, I create characters whose views are not my own, and I allow them to be eloquent in defense of their, not my, views.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.
I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.
In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.
Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.
Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.
Faith doesn’t mean you never doubt. It only means you never act upon your doubts.
The only way to learn is by changing your mind.
Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.
Writing sessions can last an hour or sixteen hours, depending on how it’s going.
The opposite of the happy ending is not actually the sad ending-the sad ending is sometimes the happy ending. The opposite of the happy ending is actually the unsatisfying ending.
I hope I am remembered by my children as a good father.
Maybe she couldn’t know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.
I’ve lived too long with pain. I won’t know who I am without it.
There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever.
All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.
The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.
Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.