22. (Something I'd like to share.)

"...if the story is about a man and a woman changing a tire on a remote highway... you've nonetheless got to convince me of the highway, the tire, the night, the margin, the shoulder, the gravel under their knees, the lug nuts, the difficulty getting the whole thing apart and back together, and the smells. You must do that. But that's not what you're there to deliver. That's the way you're going to seduce me... after you've got my shirt caught in the machine of the story and you've drawn me in, what you're really going to crush me with are these hearts and these people. Who are they?"
--Ron Carlson, in an interview with Susan McInnis (as transcribed in Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft by Janet Burroway)

I love his use of conflicting imagery. The use of seduction moving straight into an image of a machine, which is crushing him... it's lovely. It just goes to show that imagery doesn't have to be straightforward to reach you.