“Art is revolt against fate.”

“The point of art is not to give you what you already feel comfortable with; that’s reporting, not art, that TV, not art, that’s magaziney art, not art. Art gives you so personal an interpretation that it compels you to say, “This here is more real than what I know is really out there.”

“Art is what we do and culture is what they do to us.”

“What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?”

“In a world in which everything is subject to the passing of time, art alone is both subject to time and yet victorious over it.”

“Art begins with resistance—at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.”

“I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice.”