Hope ... Is Not A Feeling; It

We Are Trying To Communicate That Which Lies In Our Deepest Heart, Which Has No Words, Which Can Only Be Hinted At Through The Means Of A Story. And Somehow, Miraculously, A Story That Comes From Deep In My Heart Calls From A Reader That Which Is Deepest In His Or Her Heart, And Together From Our Secret Hidden Selves We Create A Story That Neither Of Us Could Have Told Alone.

A Novel Is Not Born Of A Single Idea. The Stories I've Tried To Write From One Idea, No Matter How Terrific An Idea, Have Sputtered Out And Died By Chapter Three. For Me, Novels Have Invariably Come From A Complex Of Ideas That In The Beginning Seemed To Bear No Relation To Each Other, But In The Unconscious Began Mysteriously To Merge And Grow. Ideas For A Novel Are Like The Strong Guy Lines Of A Spider Web. Without Them The Silken Web Cannot Be Spun.

A Friend Of Mine Who Writes History Books Said To Me That He Thought That The Two Creatures Most To Be Pitied Were The Spider And The Novelist - Their Lives Hanging By A Thread Spun Out Of Their Own Guts. But In Some Ways I Think Writers Of Fiction Are The Creatures Most To Be Envied, Because Who Else Besides The Spider Is Allowed To Take That Fragile Thread And Weave It Into A Pattern? What A Gift Of Grace To Be Able To Take The Chaos From Within And From It To Create Some Semblance Of Order.

We Do Have Trouble Dealing With Death, But It's The One Thing That Is Guaranteed We Are All Going To Have To Do, And We Are Going To Have To Face It Many Times Before We Die Ourselves.

If We Marvel At The Artist Who Has Written A Great Book, We Must Marvel More At Those People Whose Lives Are Works Of Art And Who Don't Even Know It, Who Wouldn't Believe It If They Were Told. However Hard Work Good Writing May Be, It Is Easier Than Good Living.