Afterwards, When It's All Over,

My Life Is Like A Memento Mori Painting From European Art: There Is Always A Grinning Skull At My Side To Remind Me Of The Folly Of Human Ambition.

I Wept Heartily Over This Poor Little Deceased Soul. It Was The First Sentient Being I Had Ever Killed. I Was Now A Killer. I Was Now As Guilty As Cain. I Was Sixteen Years Old, A Harmless Boy, Bookish And Religious, And Now I Had Blood On My Hands. It's A Terrible Burden To Carry. All Sentient Life Is Sacred.

A Realization That The Founding Principle Of Existence Is What We Call Love, Which Works Itself Out Sometimes Not Clearly, Not Cleanly, Not Immediately, Nonetheless Ineluctably.

I Am Not A Particularly Natural Writer. I Am Not A Person Who Can Write In Paragraphs The Way Some Writers Do. For Me, It's Sentence By Sentence, Sometimes Word-by-word. And I Revise Constantly. It's A Very Laborious Process, But I Love Doing It.

Any Writer Will Be Happy And Good Only If They Know What They're Doing And Why They're Doing It.