Sometimes It Seemed To Him That His

I Was Behaving, Just Like I Promised, But Fate Intervened.

A Novel Is Not Born Of A Single Idea. The Stories I've Tried To Write From One Idea, No Matter How Terrific An Idea, Have Sputtered Out And Died By Chapter Three. For Me, Novels Have Invariably Come From A Complex Of Ideas That In The Beginning Seemed To Bear No Relation To Each Other, But In The Unconscious Began Mysteriously To Merge And Grow. Ideas For A Novel Are Like The Strong Guy Lines Of A Spider Web. Without Them The Silken Web Cannot Be Spun.

On Decoration Day, While Everyone Else In Town Was At The Cemetery Decorating The Graves Of Our Glorious War Dead, Willie Beaner And Me, Robert Burns Hewitt, Took Mabel Cramm's Bloomers And Run Them Up The Flagpole In Front Of The Town Hall. That Was The Beginning Of All My Troubles.

...one Reason I Became A Writer Was That I Figured Out That If You Call Yourself A Writer, You Can Read All You Want And People Think That You Are Working.

I'm Sure My First Nine Years Have Had A Powerful Influence On The Kind Of Books I Write.