Fiction Is Life With The Dull Bits

It Is Almost Better To Be An Impulse Shirt-buyer Than An Impulse Shoe-buyer. I Have Worn Shirts That Made People Think I Was A Retired Mafia Hit-man Or A Yugoslavian Sports Convener From Split, But I Have Worn Shoes That Made People Think I Was Insane.

I Try To Be Specific. One Thought At A Time. Clear. Articulate. And Above All, Memorable, If You Can Be. You'd Like To Write Phrases That People Can't Forget As Soon As They Read Them.

I Taught Myself Russian, Which Was Very, Very Useful, Especially For Poetry And In Fact If You Can't Read Pushkin In Russian, You're Really Missing Something.

In The Twelfth Century The Basque Fishermen Of Biarritz Used To Hunt Whales With Deadly Efficiency. When The Whales Sensibly Moved Away, The Basques Chased Them Further And Further, With The Consequence That The Fishermen Of Biarritz Discovered America Before Columbus Did. This Is A Matter For Local Pride But On A Larger View It Is Not Quite So Stunning, Since With The Possible Exception Of The Swiss Everybody Discovered America Before Columbus Did.

Being Young Is Wonderful. But One Of The Secrets Of Being A Human Individual - A Mature Human Individual Shall We Put It Rather Grandly - Is That You Can See This Desire In Perspective.