Reason And Memory Are Nearly Always At

Take A Report. It's Dry, The Sentences Are Clunky And Unfelicitous, They're Just Conveying Information. But It Seems To Me That If You're Fully Engaged In A Great Piece Of Literature, Once You Enter The Rhythms Of The Language, Which Is A Kind Of Music, Meanings Are Being Conveyed That You're Not Fully Aware Of. They Enter Into Your Subconscious.

What I'm Trying To Do [in Winter Journal] Is To Tell The Story Of A Man's Life From Birth, But There Are Different Versions Of Him, Four Different Versions.

There Are Certain Phrases In Books Of Mine, And I Don't Know Where They Came From, Or How I Was Capable Of Thinking Up These Formulations. It's Only In The Heat Of Composition That These Things Occur To You.

But Even The Facts Do Not Always Tell The Truth

My Children Haven't Read 'winter Journal'. They Have Read Some Of My Work, But I Really Don't Foist It On Them. I Want Them To Be Free To Discover It In Their Own Good Time. I Think Reading An Intimate Memoir By Your Father - Or An Intimate Autobiographical Work, Whatever We Want To Call This Thing - You Have To Come At It At The Right Moment, So I'm Certainly Not Foisting It Upon Them.