Gordon Lish

“He came to chat with me the day of my being discharged, advising that I not stay at the dog fight until the last dog was dead. I was a kid and made little counsel. Now that I am a bigger kid, I see the value--belatedly--added. Yet I also see the loss of life in the protecting, first of all, of oneself. Better to give oneself away. Dead f*ck the dog and so on.”

“It’s not what happens to people on the page; it’s about what happens to a reader in his heart and mind.”

“...I have come to be convinced that it is only the unbending observance of custom that sustains life in an urban circumstance.”

“Don't have stories; have sentences.”