I Never Met A Man

It Is Ironic That The One Thing That All Religions Recognize As Separating Us From Our Creator, Our Very Self-consciousness, Is Also The One Thing That Divides Us From Our Fellow Creatures. It Was A Bitter Birthday Present From Evolution.

Your Freedom As A Writer Is Not Freedom Of Expression In The Sense Of Wild Blurting; You May Not Let Rip. It Is Life At Its Most Free, If You Are Fortunate Enough To Be Able To Try It, Because You Select Your Materials, Invent Your Task, And Pace Yourself.

You Can, In Short, Lead The Life Of The Mind, Which Is, Despite Some Appalling Frustrations, The Happiest Life On Earth. And One Day, In The Thick Of This, Approaching Some Partial Vision, You Will (i Swear) Find Yourself On The Receiving End Of - Of All Things - An "idea For A Story," And You Will, God Save You, Start Thinking About Writing Some Fiction Of Your Own. Then You Will Understand, In What I Fancy Might Be A Blinding Flash, That All This Passionate Thinking Is What Fiction Is About, That All Those Other Fiction Writers Started As You Did, And Are Laborers In The Same Vineyard.

The Way To Learn About A Writer Is To Read The Text. Or Texts.

I Like To Be Aware Of A Book As A Piece Of Writing, And Aware Of Its Structure As A Product Of Mind, And Yet I Want To Be Able To See The Represented World Through It. I Admire Artists Who Succeed In Dividing My Attention More Or Less Evenly Between The World Of Their Books And The Art Of Their Books . . . So That A Reader May Study The Work With Pleasure As Well As The World That It Describes.