“ They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die. ”
This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic.
~ Lorrie Moore
She knew there were only small joys in life--the big ones were too complicated to be joys when you got all through--and once you realized that, it took a lot of the pressure off.
A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.
I don’t go back and look at my early work, because the last time I did, many years ago, it left me cringing. If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.