A Writer Has To Be

I Turn Sentences Around. That's My Life. I Write A Sentence And Then I Turn It Around. Then I Look At It And Turn It Around Again.

I Often Have To Write A Hundred Pages Or More Before There's A Paragraph That's Alive.

It Isn't That You Subordinate Your Ideas To The Force Of The Facts In Autobiography But That You Construct A Sequence Of Stories To Bind Up The Facts With A Persuasive Hypothesis That Unravels Your History's Meaning.

That Can Happen When People Die, The Argument With Them Drops Away And People So Flawed While They Were Drawing Breath That At Times They Were All But Unbearable Now Assert Themselves In The Most Appealing Way, And What Was Least To Your Liking The Day Before Yesterday Becomes In The Limousine Behind The Hearse A Cause Not Only For Sympathetic Amusement But For Admiration

As For Himself, However Hateful Life Was, It Was Hateful In A Home And Not In The Gutter. Many Americans Hated Their Homes. The Number Of Homeless In America Couldn't Touch The Number Of Americans Who Had Homes And Families And Hated The Whole Thing.