Biology Gives You A Brain. Life Turns

All Of A Sudden America Wasn't About Hamburgers And Hot Rods Anymore. It Was About The Mayflower And Plymouth Rock. It Was About Something That Had Happened For Two Minutes Four Hundred Years Ago, Instead Of Everything That Had Happened Since. Instead Of Everything That Was Happening Now!

Now All The Mute Objects Of My Life Seem To Tell My Story, To Stretch Back In Time, If I Look Closely Enough.

The Window Gave Onto A View Of Dove-gray Roofs And Balconies, Each One Containing The Same Cracked Flowerpot And Sleeping Feline. It Was As If The Entire City Of Paris Had Agreed To Abide By A Single Understated Taste. Each Neighbor Was Doing His Or Her Own To Keep Up Standards, Which Was Difficult Because The French Ideal Wasn't Clearly Delineated Like The Neatness And Greenness Of American Lawns, But More Of A Picturesque Disrepair. It Took Courage To Let Things Fall Apart So Beautifully.

I Was Born Twice: First, As A Baby Girl, On A Remarkably Smogless Detroit Day In January Of 1960; And Then Again, As A Teenage Boy, In An Emergency Room Near Petoskey, Michigan, In August Of 1974.

Every Novelist Should Possess A Hermaphroditic Imagination.