Key to all fiction, long or short, is to remember that the wolfman did not want the moon.

In grammar school they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fairy tale. In the university they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fact!

Idolatry is not simply worshiping a stone image; idolatry is any concept of God that reduces Him to less than who He really is.

I always write about my own experiences, whether I've had them or not.

The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live.

The writer is the person who stays in the room.

The big secret is the ability to stay in the room.

I'm not trying as a writer to be smart or to understand the inner workings of my narrator, I'm trying to survive the typing of this story.

I always try to cheer myself up by singing when i get sad. Most of the time, it turns out that my voice is worse than my problems.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't angry some days. But I really have worked hard to put a lot of the anger and disappointment in the past.

We turn outward, attracted by the beauty we see in created things without realizing that they are only a reflection of the real beauty. And the real beauty is within us.

Goodbye, you who are, for me, the postmarks again of shattered towns--Xenia, Burnt Cabins, Hornell-- their loneliness given away in poems, only their solitude kept.

It is a rule of nature that taking a day off on the farm sets a person back at least a week.

We wait, all, for a story of us that shall reach to where we are. We listen for our own speaking; and we hear much that seems our speaking, yet makes us strange to ourselves.

The happy ending is hardly important, though we may be glad its there. The real joy is knowing that if you felt the trouble in the story, your kingdom isnt dead.

The worst moment from all of this was driving from that doctor's office, to tell my wife that I was HIV positive.

Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.

Most everything I've done I've copied from somebody else.