If A Theme Or Idea

One Can Suffer A Convulsion Of One's Entire Nature, And, Unless It Makes Some Noise, No One Notices. It's Not Just That We Are Incurious; We Completely Lack Any Sense Of Each Other's Existences.

As A Novelist, I Cannot Occupy Myself With "characters," Or At Any Rate Central Ones, Who Lack Panache, In One Or Another Sense, Who Would Be Incapable Of A Major Action Or A Major Passion, Or Who Have Not A Touch Of The Ambiguity, The Ultimate Unaccountability, The Enlarging Mistiness Of Persons "in History." History, As More Austerely I Now Know It, Is Not Romantic. But I Am.

Story Involves Action. Action Towards An End Not To Be Foreseen (by The Reader) But Also Towards An End Which, Having Been Reached, Must Be Seen To Have Been From The Start Inevitable.

Dialogue Is The Ideal Means Of Showing What Is Between The Characters. It Crystallizes Relationships. It Should, Ideally, Be So Effective As To Make Analysis Or Explanation Of The Relationships Between The Characters Unnecessary.

... Into The Novel Goes Such Taste As I Have For Rational Behaviour And Social Portraiture. The Short Story, As I See It To Be, Allows For What Is Crazy About Humanity: Obstinacies, Inordinate Heroisms, "immortal Longings.