Each Book Starts From Ashes.

I Kept Waiting For Him To Lay Bare Something More Than This Pointed Unobjectionableness, But All That Rose To The Surface Was More Surface

When I Have A First Draft, I Have A Floor Under My Feet That I Can Walk On. Then, Especially With The Help Of The Computer, Rewriting Is So Easy To Do With The Computer, Much Easier Than It Used To Be With The Typewriter. So The Books Go Through Numerous Drafts.

World War Iii Will Be Triggered Off Not By Suppressed Nationalists Seeking Political Independence, As Happened The First Time Around When The Serbs At Sarajevo Shot The Heir To The Austrian Throne, But By Some Semiliterate, Whacked-out "loner" Who Lobs A Rocket Into A Nuclear Arsenal In Order To Impress Brooke Shields.

Writing Turns You Into Somebody Who's Always Wrong. The Illusion That You May Get It Right Someday Is The Perversity That Draws You On. What Else Could? As Pathological Phenomena Go, It Doesn't Completely Wreck Your Life.

It's Absolutely Fantastic. When I Was A Kid, My Father Was Always Trying To Tell Me How To Be A Man, And He Said To Me, I Was Maybe 9, And He Said To Me, 'philip, Whenever You Take A Nap, Take Your Clothes Off, Put A Blanket On You, And You're Going To Sleep Better.' Well, As With Everything, He Was Right. ... Then The Best Part Of It Is That When You Wake Up, For The First 15 Seconds, You Have No Idea Where You Are. You're Just Alive. That's All You Know. And It's Bliss, It's Absolute Bliss.