John Irving Once Told Me

If One Yearns To See The Face Of The Divine, One Must Break Out Of The Aquarium, Escape The Fish Farm, To Go Swim Up Wild Cataracts, Dive In Deep Fjords. One Must Explore The Labyrinth Of The Reef, The Shadows Of The Lily Pads. How Limiting, How Insulting To Think Of God As A Benevolent Warden, An Absentee Hatchery Manager Who Imprisons Us In The 'comfort' Of Artificial Pools, Where Intermediaries Sprinkle Our Restrictive Waters With Sanitized Flakes Of Processed Nutriment.

If You Were Jesus With Missing Years To Kill Where Would You Go?

The Most Useful Thing About Art Is It's Uselessness.

Our Similarities Bring Us To A Common Ground; Our Differences Allow Us To Be Fascinated By Each Other.

Rules Such As "write What You Know," And "show, Don't Tell," While Doubtlessly Grounded In Good Sense, Can Be Ignored With Impunity By Any Novelist Nimble Enough To Get Away With It. There Is, In Fact, Only One Rule In Writing Fiction: Whatever Works, Works.