Status Updates From Strange Pilgrims (Penguin I...

“Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.”

“…it is because the same iron rigor needed to begin the book is required to end it. But a story has no beginning, I end: Either it works or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, my own experience, and the experience of others, shows that most of the time it is better for one’s health to start again in another direction, or toss the story in the wastebasket.”

“The effort involved in writing a short story is as intense as beginning a novel, wheee everything must be defined in the first paragraph: structure, tone, style, rhythm, length, and sometimes even the personality of a character. All the rest is the pleasure of writing, the most intimate, solitary pleasure one can imagine, and if the rest of one’s life is not spent correcting the novel…