I Hear That In My

Every Writer Knows That When You're Imitating Somebody - You Know, You're Sounding Like Faulkner - You're Doing Pretty Good, But Your Life In Hoboken Isn't Faulkneresque. So You Get That Kind Of Shortfall Between The Actual Experience Of The Writer And The Things He's Hungry To Express And The Voice Itself.

The Cool Parts - The Parts That Have Won Dubai Its Reputation As 'the Vegas Of The Middle East' Or 'the Venice Of The Middle East' Or 'the Disney World Of The Middle East, If Disney World Were The Size Of San Francisco And Out In A Desert' - Have Been Built In The Last Ten Years.

I Heard Zen Teacher One Time Talking About Abortion, And He Was Saying The Way That Abortion Makes Bad Karma Is Any Time The Person Involved Pretends That There's Not A Cost To The Choice, One Way Or The Other; Whether You Get It Or Don't Get It, There's A Cost. That's Just Basic Responsibility, To Admit That There's A Cost. And The Bad Karma Is When You Pretend That The Thing Is Free.

There Were Several Points Where I Would Kind Of Turn To The Book And Say, "get Thee Behind Me." I Don't Think Real Novelists Do That. But I Make A Distinction Between Prose That's Very Efficiency-minded (like, The Minimum I Can Get Away With), Versus Loosening The Screws And Letting The Words Spill Out Beautifully And So On.

Humor Is What Happens When We're Told The Truth Quicker And More Directly Than We're Used To.