Motivations Are Too Tangled And Complex.

Much More Than Memoir; It's History.

But Really, It Was Reading That Led Me To Writing. And In Particular, Reading The American Classics Like Twain Who Taught Me At An Early Age That Ordinary Lives Of Ordinary People Can Be Made Into High Art.

The Best Thing About Writing Programs Is That It Rationalized The Apprenticeship Of A Writer.

One Of The Most Difficult Things To Say To Another Person Is, 'i Hope That You Will Love Me For No Good Reason.' But It Is What We All Want And Rarely Dare To Say To One Another, To Our Children, To Our Parents And Mates, To Our Friends, And To Strangers, Especially To Strangers Who Have Neither Good, Nor Bad Reasons To Love Us.

We Are Not Buried In History, But Surrounded By It. You Can't Avoid Our Behavior Being Shaped By It, To A Considerable Degree. We Have This Fantasy That We Are Free Of History. This Allows Us Not To See The Circumstances, The Historical Circumstances Of Other People.