Home, Bed, Sleep, Mother--who Knew

I Was Very Influenced By The Magic Mountain. It's A Book That Had A Huge Impact On Me. I Loved That As A Shape For A Novel: Put A Bunch Of People In A Beautiful Place, Give Them All Tuberculosis, Make Them All Stay In A Fur Sleeping Bag For Several Years And See What Happens.

That's The Way I Work. I Get It All Plotted In My Mind, And Then I Write It Down.

It Makes You Wonder. All The Brilliant Things We Might Have Done With Our Lives If Only We Suspected We Knew How.

But We Cannot Unbraid The Story Of Another Person’s Life And Take Out All The Parts That Don’t Suit Our Purposes And Put Forth Only The Ones That Do.

That Is One Thing I've Learned, That It Is Possible To Really Understand Things At Certain Points, And Not Be Able To Retain Them, To Be In Utter Confusion Just A Short While Later. I Used To Think That Once You Really Knew A Thing, Its Truth Would Shine On Forever. Now It's Pretty Obvious To Me That More Often Than Not The Batteries Fade, And Sometimes What You Knew Even Goes Out With A Bang When You Try To Call On It, Just Like A Lightbulb Cracking Off When You Throw The Switch.