I Have The Sense That

Often Writing Is Like A Struggle To Get Back To A Kind Of Belated, Quite Impure Virginity.

It Is Death That Goes Down To The Center Of The Earth, The Great Burial Church The Earth Is, And Then To The Curved Ends Of The Universe, As Light Is Said To Do

Memory, So Complete And Clear Or So Evasive, Has To Be Ended, Has To Be Put Aside, As If One Were Leaving A Chapel And Bringing The Prayer To An End In One's Head.

Me, My Literary Reputation Is Mostly Abroad, But I Am Anchored Here In New York. I Can't Think Of Any Other Place I'd Rather Die Than Here.

It Bothers Me That I Won't Live To See The End Of The Century, Because, When I Was Young, In St. Louis, I Remember Saying To Marilyn, My Sister By Adoption, That That Was How Long I Wanted To Live: Seventy Years.