That's How A Thing Starts Out Real

Even As A Young Child, I Was A Lover Of Books And Of The Spaces In Which, As Indeed In A Sacred Temple, Books Might Safely Reside.

Ideas Brush Past Fleeting And Insubstantial As Moths. But I Let Them Go, I Don't Want Them. What I Want Is A Voice.

Look At The World And See What's There. It's Very Beautiful. It's A Very Exciting But In Some Ways Treacherous World, And All This Goes Into The Writing.

Novels Usually Evolve Out Of 'character.' Characters Generate Stories, And The Shape Of A Novel Is Entirely Imagined But Should Have An Aesthetic Coherence.

You People Who Have Survived Childhood Don't Remeber Any Longer What It Was Like. You Think Children Are Whole, Uncomplicated Creatures, And If You Split Them In Two With A Handy Axe There Would Be All One Substance Inside, Hard Candy. But It Isn't Hard Candy So Much As A Hopeless Seething Lava Of All Kinds Of Things, A Turmoil, A Mess. And Once The Child Starts Thinking About This Mess He Begins To Disintegrate As A Child And Turns Into Something Else--an Adult, An Animal.