There Will Always Be Non-readers, Bad Readers,

The Better You Know Someone, The Less Well You Often See Them (and The Less Well They Can Therefore Be Transferred Into Fiction). They May Be So Close As To Be Out Of Focus, And There Is No Operating Novelist To Dispel The Blur.

Life … Is A Bit Like Reading. … If All Your Responses To A Book Have Already Been Duplicated And Expanded Upon By A Professional Critic, Then What Point Is There To Your Reading? Only That It’s Yours. Similarly, Why Live Your Life? Because It’s Yours. But What If Such An Answer Becomes Less And Less Convincing?

And No, It Wasn't Shame I Now Felt, Or Guilt, But Something Rarer In My Life And Stronger Than Both: Remorse. A Feeling Which Is More Complicated, Curdled, And Primeval. Whose Chief Characteristic Is That Nothing Can Be Done About It: Too Much Time Has Passed, Too Much Damage Has Been Done, For Amends To Be Made.

I'm One Of Those Writers Who Started Off Writing Novels And Came To Writing Short Stories Later, Partly Because I Didn't Have The Right Ideas, Partly Because I Think That Short Stories Are More Difficult. I Think Learning To Write Short Stories Also Made Me Attracted Toward A Paring Down Of The Novel Form.

There Is Accumulation. There Is Responsibility. And Beyond This There Is Great Unrest.