I'm A Novelist, Period. An American Novelist.

I Long For The Days Of Disorder. I Want Them Back, The Days When I Was Alive On The Earth, Rippling In The Quick Of My Skin, Heedless And Real. I Was Dumb-muscled And Angry And Real. This Is What I Long For, The Breach Of Peace, The Days Of Disarray When I Walked Real Streets And Did Things Slap-bang And Felt Angry And Ready All The Time, A Danger To Others And A Distant Mystery To Myself.

Naturally A Direct Comparison Of Terrorist And Novelist Is Complete Nonsense. But There Was Once A Time When The Novelist Also Had Some Influence On How His Contemporaries Thought, The Way They Saw The World, The Way They Lived.

The Smoke Alarm Went Off In The Hallway Upstairs, Either To Let Us Know The Battery Had Just Died Or Because The House Was On Fire.

You Shout Because It Makes You Brave Or You Want To Announce Your Recklessness.

It Frequently Happens That I Begin A Novel With Just A Visual Image Of Something, A Vague Sense Of People In Three Dimensional Space.