Leonard Michaels quotes:

Stories should be natural as apples, brief as lust, long as a thought.

Some animals are secretive; some are shy. A cat is private.

Adultery is not about sex or romance. Ultimately, it is about how little we mean to one another.

Looking at a cat, like looking at clouds or stars or the ocean, makes it difficult to believe there is nothing miraculous in this world.

Self-confidence can be crippling.

The prose as such has to be singing the song the story is telling.

I can only gesture at what makes a story good.

I read assiduously. I kept in touch with my species.

Is the story developing an attitude or victimized by it.

Of mystery there is no end. Of clarity, there is precious little.

Sometimes language gets in the way of the story's feelings. The reader finds himself experiencing the language of the story rather than the story. The words sit there on the page like coins, with their own opacity, as though they're there for their own sake. "A man goes into a phone booth, stirring coins in his palm." "Stirring" is such an obviously selected word. You can feel the writer looking for the word as he sat at the typewriter.

There is always something for which there is no accounting. Take, for example, the whole world.

There's hardly anywhere in literature where you don't find a triangle.