I'm a neurotic Jew who doesn't want loans. I can't even carry a balance on my credit card without having a nervous breakdown.
There's something about a parenthesis in fiction that puts one off, saying, "It's me, moi, jumping in now. "
Our salvation never comes in the form we would have chosen.
Sometimes, in that darkness, there is a single act of love, some selfless gesture, an aspiration, and we see that it's not been all waste, all hopeless, and we can. . . well. . . go on.
You must get beyond divertissement, sketch, anecdote, the interesting moment. You must get to the mystery of human personality. What is the line of the story that leads us to a point where we see or intuit something we haven't before?
A short story is a writer's way of thinking through experience. . . Journalism aims at accuracy, but fiction's aim is truth. The writer distorts reality in the interest of a larger truth.
What a strange thing it is to recognize a sound like the shriek of a wounded animal, when you've never heard the shriek of a wounded animal.
The worst acting is about imitation.
[On the press:] I love working with children, and I have learned to be very patient with them.
The forests are the lungs of the world. I’ve always believed if you breathe, you’re an environmentalist.
The good Lord made us all out of iron. Then he turns up the heat to forge some of us into steel.