I Enjoy Going Back And

Somebody Asked Somerset Maugham About His Place In The Pantheon Of Writers, And He Said, "i'm In The Very Front Row Of The Second Rate." I'm Sort Of Haunted By That.

At Its Most Basic We Are Discussing A Learned Skill (writing), But Do We Not Agree That Sometimes The Most Basic Skills Can Create Things Far Beyond Our Expectations? We Are Talking About Tools And Carpentry, About Words And Style... But As We Move Along, You'd Do Well To Remember That We Are Also Talking About Magic.

I Don't Spend The Day Writing. I'll Maybe Write Fresh Copy For Two Hours, And Then I'll Go Back And Revise Some Of It And Print What I Like And Then Turn It Off.

I've Spoken Out My Whole Life Against The Idea Of Simply Dismissing Whole Areas Of Fiction By Saying It's "genre" And Therefore Can't Be Seen As Literature.

I Was In Enough To Get Along With People. I Was Never Socially Inarticulate. Not A Loner. And That Saved My Life, Saved My Sanity. That And The Writing. But To This Day I Distrust Anybody Who Thought School Was A Good Time. Anybody.