Now Begin In The Middle, And Later

I Think Art Must Be Tough! I Think Art Has To Be Hard. I Don't Think It Should Be Easy. I Think It Should Take Foot-pounds Of Energy To Produce That Art, Otherwise We Would Have More Mediocre Writers, And We Don't Have Room For Any More Mediocrity In The World. There's Already Enough Of It Being Visited On Us Night And Day Through The Internet, And Through Television, And Through Politics.

Like A Wind Crying Endlessly Through The Universe, Time Carries Away The Names And The Deeds Of Conquerors And Commoners Alike. And All That We Were, All That Remains, Is In The Memories Of Those Who Cared We Came This Way For A Brief Moment.

Writing Is The Hardest Work In The World. I Have Been A Bricklayer And A Truck Driver, And I Tell You – As If You Haven't Been Told A Million Times Already – That Writing Is Harder. Lonelier. And Nobler And More Enriching.

I Don't Know How You Perceive My Mission As A Writer, But For Me It Is Not A Responsibility To Reaffirm Your Concretized Myths And Provincial Prejudices. It Is Not My Job To Lull You With A False Sense Of The Rightness Of The Universe. This Wonderful And Terrible Occupation Of Recreating The World In A Different Way, Each Time Fresh And Strange, Is An Act Of Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare. I Stir The Soup. I Inconvenience You. I Make Your Nose Run And Your Eyes Water.

I See All. I Hear All. I Know All. And I Spend A Great Deal Of Time In The Bathroom.