Every Love Story Is A Potential Grief

The Writer's Life [is] Full Of Frailty And Defeat Like Any Other Life. What Counts Is The Work. Yet The Work Can Quite Easily Be Buried, Or Half-buried, By The Life.

When We Fall In Love, We Hope - Both Egotistically And Altruistically - That We Shall Be Finally, Truly Seen: Judged And Approved. Of Course, Love Does Not Always Bring Approval: Being Seen May Just As Well Lead To A Thumbs-down And A Season In Hell.

Do Not Imagine That Art Is Something Which Is Designed To Give Gentle Uplift And Self-confidence . Art Is Not A Brassiere. At Least, Not In The English Sense. But Do Not Forget That Brassiere Is The French Word For Life-jacket.

I'm Interested In Such Things As The Difference Between How We Perceive The World And What The World Turns Out To Be. The Difference Is Between The Stories We Tell Others And The Stories We Tell Ourselves. There Is A Wonderful Russian Saying, Which I Use As The Epigraph Of One Of My Novels, Which Goes, He Lies Like An Eyewitness. Which Is Very Sly, Clever And True.

Sometimes I Think The Purpose Of Life Is To Reconcile Us To Its Eventual Loss By Wearing Us Down, By Proving, However Long It Takes, That Life Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be.