Memories Are What You No Longer Want

Novels Are Like Paintings, Specifically Watercolors. Every Stroke You Put Down You Have To Go With. Of Course You Can Rewrite, But The Original Strokes Are Still There In The Texture Of The Thing.

My Only Advantage As A Reporter Is That I Am So Physically Small, So Temperamentally Unobtrusive, And So Neurotically Inarticulate That People Tend To Forget That My Presence Runs Counter To Their Best Interests.

I Lost The Conviction That Lights Would Always Turn Green For Me, The Pleasant Certainty That Those Rather Passive Virtues Which Had Won Me Approval As A Child Automatically Guaranteed Me Not Only Phi Beta Kappa Keys But Happiness, Honor, And The Love Of A Good Man; Lost A Certain Touching Faith In The Totem Power Of Good Manners, Clean Hair, And A Proven Competence On The Stanford-binet Scale. To Such Doubtful Amulets Had My Self-respect Been Pinned, And I Faced Myself That Day With The Non-plused Apprehension Of Someone Who Has Come Across A Vampire And Has No Crucifix At Hand.

We Imagine Things — That We Wouldn't Be Able To Survive, But In Fact, We Do Survive. ... We Have No Choice, So We Do It.

Lancaster, California ... That Promised Land Sometimes Called 'the West Coast Of Iowa.