For Beatrice - You Will Always Be

Undeveloped, The Whole Thing,tossed Into A Box Before We Really Had A Chance To Know What We Had, And That's Why We Broke Up.

One Wanders Through Life As If Wandering Through A Field In The Dark Of Night, Wearing A Blindfold And Very Heavy Shoes, With A Poisonous Toad Waiting Patiently Beneath A Clump Of Weeds, Knowing Full Well That Eventually You Will Step On Him.

If You Feel . . . That Well-read People Are Less Likely To Be Evil, And A World Full Of People Sitting Quietly With Good Books In Their Hands Is Preferable To World Filled With Schisms And Sirens And Other Noisy And Troublesome Things, Then Every Time You Enter A Library You Might Say To Yourself, 'the World Is Quiet Here,' As A Sort Of Pledge Proclaiming Reading To Be The Greater Good.

I Have This Fantasy That The Second Movie Would Begin With A Brief Statement By All Of The Young Actors Who Had Played The Children In The First Movie, Explaining How It Had Ruined Their Lives, So We Would Catch Up With Emily Browning Drinking Heavily In The Back Of A Burlesque Bar, And Maybe Liam Aiken Would Be Living Underneath A Bridge, And Then Instead Of The Twins Who Played Sunny, We Would Just Try To Find The Oldest Woman In The World, And Get An Interview With Her Sitting In A Trailer Park.

I First Told The Idea To An Editor I Had Met Who, After Reading One Of My Novels For Adults That Was Set In A High School, Had An Idea That I Might Write Something For Children.