I Think Of Novels As

When You Are Young, You Think It's Going To Be Solved By Love. But It Never Is. Being Close -- As Close As You Can Get -- To Another Person Only Makes Clear That Impassable Distance Between You.' If Being In Love Only Made People More Lonely, Why Would Everyone Want It So Much?' Because Of The Illusion. You Fall In Love, It's Intoxicating, And For A Little While You Feel Like You've Actually Become One With The Other Person. Merged Souls And So On. You Think You'll Never Be Lonely Again.

He Held My Hand And Told Me A Story About When He Was Six And Threw A Rock At A Kid's Head Who Was Bullying His Brother, And How After That No One Had Bothered Either Of Them Again. 'you Have To Stick Up For Yourself,' He Told Me. 'but It's Bad To Throw Rocks,' I Said. 'i Know. You're Smarter Than Me. You'll Find Something Better Than Rocks.

Except For When I Was Very Little And Thought That Being An "engineer" Meant He Drove A Train. Then I Imagined Him In The Seat Of An Engine Car The Color Of Coal, A String Of Shiny Passenger Cars Trailing Behind. One Day My Father Laughed And Corrected Me. Everything Snapped Into Focus. It's One Of Those Unforgettable Moments That Happen As A Child, When You Discover That All Along The World Has Been Betraying You.

For Me, The Most Powerful Way To Write About Something Is Through The Absence Of It. Rather Than Writing About What It Was To Become A New Mother, I Wrote, For Example, A Father Facing Death And Addressing His Estranged Son About The Regrets Of His Relationship.

The Shop Owner Did Not Try To Push The Book On Any Of Her Customers. She Knew That In The Wrong Hands Such A Book Could Easily Be Dismissed, Or, Worse, Go Unread. Instead She Let It Sit Where It Was In The Hope That The Right Reader Might Discover It.