[t]he Heart Is Like Any Other Organ,

When You Have Committed Enough Words To Paper, You Feel You Have A Spine Stiff Enough To Stand Up In The Wind. But When You Stop Writing, You Find That's All You Are - A Spine, A Row Of Rattling Vertebrae, Dried Out Like An Old Quill Pen.

For Myself, The Only Way I Know How To Make A Book Is To Construct It Like A Collage: A Bit Of Dialogue Here, A Scrap Of Narrative, An Isolated Description Of A Common Object, An Elaborate Running Metaphor Which Threads Between The Sequences And Holds Different Narrative Lines Together.

The Weight Of The Old World Is Stifling, And Trying To Shovel Its Weight Off Your Life Is Tiring Just To Think About. The Constant Shuttling Of Opinions Is Tiring, And The Shuffling Of Papers Across Desks, The Chopping Of Logic And The Trimming Of Attitudes. There Must, Somewhere, Be A Simpler, More Violent World.

When You Become Published And Become A Reviewer, Piles Of Books Come Along And You Are Pushed By Fashion And What You Are Commissioned To Do.

I Think It Took Me Half A Page Of 'wolf Hall' To Think: 'this Is The Novel I Should Have Been Writing All Along.'