A Novel Is A Mirror

When I Read Biographies, I Skip The First Thirty Pages About The Childhood Because It Doesn't Seem Interesting To Me.

We Die Containing A Richness Of Lovers And Tribes, Tastes We Have Swallowed, Bodies We Have Plunged Into And Swum Up As If Rivers Of Wisdom, Characters We Have Climbed Into As If Trees, Fears We Have Hidden In As If Caves. I Wish For All This To Be Marked On By Body When I Am Dead. I Believe In Such Cartography - To Be Marked By Nature, Not Just To Label Ourselves On A Map Like The Names Of Rich Men And Women On Buildings. We Are Communal Histories, Communal Books. We Are Not Owned Or Monogamous In Our Taste Or Experience.

Read Him Slowly, Dear Girl, You Must Read Kipling Slowly. Watch Carefully Where The Commas Fall So You Can Discover The Natural Pauses. He Is A Writer Who Used Pen And Ink. He Looked Up From The Page A Lot, I Believe, Stared Through His Window And Listened To Birds, As Most Writers Who Are Alone Do. Some Do Not Know The Names Of Birds, Though He Did. Your Eye Is Too Quick And North American. Think About The Speed Of His Pen. What An Appalling, Barnacled Old First Paragraph It Is Otherwise.

To Write About Someone Like Myself Would Be Very Limiting.

Sadness Is Very Close To Hate.