Here Is The World, And You Live

These Days, Clarissa Believes, You Measure People First By Their Kindness And Their Capacity For Devotion. You Get Tired, Sometimes, Of Wit And Intellect; Everybody's Little Display Of Genius.

I Think Writing Is, By Definition, An Optimistic Act.

There's The Fact That American Fiction Is Basically The Most Apolitical Fiction On The Globe. A South American Writer Wouldn't Dare Think Of Writing A Novel If It Didn't Allude To The System Into Which These People Are Orchestrated - Or An Eastern European Writer, Or A Russian Writer, Or A Chinese Writer. Only American Writers Are Able To Imagine That The Government And The Corporations - All Of It - Seem To Have No Effect Whatsoever.

That Is What We Do. That Is What People Do. They Stay Alive For Each Other.

I Suspect Any Serious Reader Has A First Great Book, Just The Way Anybody Has A First Kiss.