"The short story isn’t a tree, it’s a forest, maybe a jungle, and that isn’t sufficiently recognized."

"Short stories are the same: they generally thrive on very severe attention. But it’s an art, not a science, so some writers ... need a certain ornateness to achieve their effect."

"The best photographs are like bottled lightning, capturing an extraordinary, unrepeatable moment."

"I just remember getting bashed for them. But what is funny is that someone will bash them, then pick one out and say 'this one was the exception' and then another person will be bashing them and that won't be their exception, a different one'll be their exception. ... Some of those albums that people say were so bad are among my favorites."

"Beginning writers almost always underedit."

"The short story is usually about one thing. ... I think this is the great relief of the short story."

"I think that the short story has a tendency to prove people who pronounce [negatively] on it foolish."

"It's always about execution. If I told you that I was going to write a story about a man who wakes up and finds he has turned into a beetle, there's a good chance you'd think it was a stupid idea. But Kafka has the power to make that not only a good story, but one that's actually shaped the way we think about short stories. ... Part of the answer is something about conviction, something about summoning the authority."

"There are broadly two ways to approach any piece of writing, in my opinion. One is where you have an idea of where the whole thing is heading ... The other is where you have a phrase, an image, maybe a single line that fascinates you and provokes you into elaborating it."

"I do think a lot of bunk is talked about short stories. ... I feel there's a way that the quote-unquote literary short story has unfairly hogged the limelight. A short story is a great way to explore mood, a pregnant silence, a seemingly mundane scenario that's somehow charged with significance. But I don't see why that kind of short story is the only kind or necessarily the most valid. A short story is just short. Beyond that I think anything is possible."

"[Flannery O'Connor] just had a sense of an opening and then pursued it—like Theseus following the thread out of the labyrinth. ... I think this seems scary, but it can lead to an outcome that feels very natural, unforced and satisfying. ... I really encourage people to follow this advice, and largely follow it myself. "