Sometimes translation stops you understanding.

Word spread because word will spread. Stories and secrets fight, stories win, shed new secrets, which new stories fight, and on.

It felt like being a child again, though it was not. Being a child is like nothing. It's only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.

Being a child is like nothing. It's only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.

I needed to be alone for whatever would happen. I knew that something would as certainly as if this were a last chapter.

I'd never understood the injunction not to regret anything, couldn't see how that wasn't cowardice...

A promise fulfilled may be a classic moment, but prophecies mean anticlimax. How much more awesome was an unexpected salvation?

You'd love a bit of pomp: that way in later years you might invoke end-of-empire ghosts.

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led.

I respect anyone who has to fight and howl for his decency.

Madness such as this, its like trying to stop a fire with the moisture from a kiss

The curvy woman likes to show skin in the right ways - and she should!

When my first daughter was born, I had to figure out a new way of [making music] so that I wouldn't wake her up.

Let's start with where you are,' he said. 'You're here.' Taking her hand, he pressed it to his chest above his heart.

A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned, for he will be going out on a day when he shouldn't.

In the Bible, God uses brothel owners, pagan kings, murderers and mercenaries as instruments of good; at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey.

My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.