“To imagine yourself inside another person...is what a story writer does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.”

“Death does not concern me. He who takes his first step uses perhaps his last shoes. (Halmalo)”

“This time it was the sentence opening the last part of a story I had worked on for months: a sentence as is often worked off paper first. The pace of narrative and interest in character do not readily help the writer's hand to set down a sentence of that order. For though characters must take things in their own stride – somewhere in his story the writer cannot hold back this sentence that judges them. He wants it unobtrusive to his pace and the characters that caused him to write. The difficulty is to judge without seeming to be there, with a finality in the words that will make them casual and part of the story itself, except perhaps to another age.”

“Do you know what it's like to find yourself drawn to another person who gives you that missing piece? Who electrifies you with just the sound of his voice?”

“Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.”

“I saw the last piece of innocence unfurl inside of her.-Nick Plato (from the story Platonick)”