People You Knew When You Were Teenagers,

I Can't Explain The Alchemy That Transmuted One Evening Into The Equivalent Of Years Held Lightly In Common. The Only Way I Can Put It Is That We Recognized, Too Surely Even For Surprise, That We Shared The Same Currency.

Don't Get Discouraged If You're Hammering Away At A Sentence Or A Paragraph Or A Chapter, And It Keeps Coming Out Wrong. You're Allowed To Get It Wrong, As Many Times As You Need To; You Only Need To Get It Right Once.

I Am, Of Course, Romanticizing; A Chronic Tendency Of Mine.

There Was A Time When I Believed I Was The Redeemed One, The Boy Borne Safely Home On The Ebb Of Whatever Freak Tide Carried Peter And Jamie Away. Not Any More. In Ways Too Dark And Crucial To Be Called Metaphorical, I Never Left That Wood.

I Don't Do That Kind Of Negativity. If You Put Your Energy Into Thinking About How Much The Fall Would Hurt, You're Already Halfway Down.