Self-confidence can be crippling.

Some animals are secretive; some are shy. A cat is private.

Stories should be natural as apples, brief as lust, long as a thought.

Looking at a cat, like looking at clouds or stars or the ocean, makes it difficult to believe there is nothing miraculous in this world.

There's hardly anywhere in literature where you don't find a triangle.

Of mystery there is no end. Of clarity, there is precious little.

There is always something for which there is no accounting. Take, for example, the whole world.

I read assiduously. I kept in touch with my species.

The prose as such has to be singing the song the story is telling.

Is the story developing an attitude or victimized by it.

I can only gesture at what makes a story good.

I slept so long and hard that when my mother woke me the next morning I was a stranger to myself.

Something must be birth out of whatever He has given you.

Be with Allah, You will find Allah with you.

You are not going to change the minds of people who are looking for attention.

Earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors.

The portion we see of human beings is very small: their formats and faces, voices and words.... beyond these, like an immense dark continent, lies all that has made them.

Pick a better verb. Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an A-bomb.

If you can lessen the chance of a bad injury by being strong, you have to do it.

They looked at one another in incomprehension, two minds driving opposite ways up a narrow street and waiting for the other man to reverse first.

If you don't visit a bad neighborhood, it might visit you.