It's Strange How Pain Marks Our Faces,

It's How We See The World That Keeps The Darkness Beyond At Bay. Keeps It From Pouring Through And Devouring Us. I Think All Of Us Might Know That, Way Down Deep.

I Believe In Evil, But All My Life I've Gone Back And Forth About Whether Or Not There's An Outside Evil, Whether Or Not There's A Force In The World That Really Wants To Destroy Us, From The Inside Out, Individually And Collectively.

Reading Is The Creative Center Of A Writer’s Life. I Take A Book With Me Everywhere I Go, And Find There Are All Sorts Of Opportunities To Dip In. The Trick Is To Teach Yourself To Read In Small Sips As Well As In Long Swallows. Waiting Rooms Were Made For Books— Of Course! But So Are Theater Lobbies Before The Show, Long And Boring Checkout Lines, And Everyone’s Favorite, The John. You Can Even Read While You’re Driving, Thanks To The Audiobook Revolution. Of The Books I Read Each Year, Anywhere From Six To A Dozen Are On Tape.

And I Wonder If There Is Really Any Point To What I'm Doing, Or What I'm Supposed To Make Of A World Where A Man Can Get Rich Playing "let's Pretend

If You Expect To Succeed As A Writer, Rudeness Should Be The Second-to-least Of Your Concerns. The Least Of All Should Be Polite Society And What It Expects. If You Intend To Write As Truthfully As You Can, Your Days As A Member Of Polite Society Are Numbered, Anyway.