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A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself.

When I read good stories, I want to write good stories too.

Making sentences is what I do. I mean, the story will come as I write.

A lot of times you get people writing wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and they fall in love with their prose style, but the stories really aren't that terrific.

A good story is a good story, whatever the medium.

The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow of a dull one.

I'm one of those people who think that stories should have a beginning, a middle and an end, and then they're over, and then you tell the next story.

I find that most novels are not good all the way through. A story can be good all the way through, every sentence.

Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.

I think that if you have a knack for storytelling, and you work really hard at it, you'll have a chance to tap into something deep. But the fact remains that good sentences are hard won. Any writer worth a lick knows constructing a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter is hard work.