But The First Lesson Reading

If You Read The Biographies Of People Who Have Written Good Books, You Often See The Point Where They Suddenly Come Into Themselves, And Those Weeks In The Spring Of 1997 Were When I Came Into Myself As A Writer. They Feel Like Some Of The Best Weeks Of Writing I’ll Ever Have. The Discovery That I Could Write Better About Something As Trivial As An Ordinary Family Dinner Than I Could About The Exploding Prison Population Of The United States, And The Corporatization Of American Life, And All The Other Things I’d Been Trying To Do, Was A Real Revelation.

I Was About 13, In Some Ways, When I Wrote The First Book. Approximately 18 When I Wrote The Second.

Depression Presents Itself As A Realism Regarding The Rottenness Of The World In General And The Rottenness Of Your Life In Particular.

Fiction, I Believed, Was The Transmutation Of Experiential Dross Into Linguistic Gold. Fiction Meant Taking Up Whatever The World Had Abandoned By The Road And Making Something Beautiful Out Of It.

[t]o Love A Specific Person, And To Identify With His Or Her Struggles And Joys As If They Were Your Own, You Have To Surrender Some Of Your Self.