Leonard Michaels

“March 6, 1961 I remembered a party in a house outside of Ann Arbor. There was a jazz band -- piano, bass,…

— Leonard Michaels

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

— Leonard Michaels

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

— Leonard Michaels

“Something Evil I said, "Ikstein stands outside the door for a long time before he knocks. Did you suspect that? Did you…

— Leonard Michaels

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

— Leonard Michaels

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

— Leonard Michaels

“Answers I began two hundred hours of continuous reading in the twelve hours that remained before examinations. Melvin Bloom my roommate flipped…

— Leonard Michaels

Self-confidence can be crippling.

— Leonard Michaels

Is the story developing an attitude or victimized by it.

— Leonard Michaels

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

— Leonard Michaels

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

— Leonard Michaels

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

— Leonard Michaels

I can only gesture at what makes a story good.

— Leonard Michaels

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

— Leonard Michaels

“In 1982, Raphael Nachman, visiting lecturer in mathematics at the university in Cracow, declined the tour of Auschwitz, where his grandparents had…

— Leonard Michaels

“Never to have to think of yourself as white is a luxory that makes you deeply stupid.”

— Leonard Michaels

Sometimes language gets in the way of the story's feelings. The reader finds himself experiencing the language of the story rather than…

— Leonard Michaels

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

— Leonard Michaels