Every Year, When You're A

That's Something I Think Is Growing On Me As I Get Older: Happy Endings.

It Was At This Time That She Entirely Gave Up On Reading. The Covers Of Books Looked Like Coffins To Her, Either Shabby Or Ornate, And What Was Inside Them Might As Well Have Been Dust.

I Began To Understand That There Were Certain Talkers - Certain Girls - Whom People Liked To Listen To, Not Because Of What They, The Girls, Had To Say, But Because Of The Delight They Took In Saying It. A Delight In Themselves, A Shine On Their Faces, A Conviction That Whatever They Were Telling About Was Remarkable And That They Themselves Could Not Help But Give Pleasure. There Might Be Other People - People Like Me - Who Didn't Concede This, But That Was Their Loss. And People Like Me Would Never Be The Audience These Girls Were After, Anyway.

I Want The Reader To Feel Something Is Astonishing. Not The 'what Happens,' But The Way Everything Happens. These Long Short Story Fictions Do That Best, For Me.

I Used To Feel For Years And Years And Years That I Was Very Remiss Not To Have Written A Novel And I Would Question People Who Wrote Novels And Try To Find Out How They Did It And How They Had Got Past Page 30. Then, With The Approach Of Old Age, I Began To Just Think: “well, Lucky I Can Do Anything At All.