No Novel Has Ever Changed

Mere Fact Has No Chance Of Being Formally Perfect. It Will Get In The Way, It Will Be All Elbows.

Faith Is A Talent, And It Goes The Way Of All Your Talents. Getting Old Is The Subtraction Of Your Powers. Which Very Much Goes For Writing.

It's Been Said That Happiness Writes White. It Doesn't Show Up On The Page. When You're On Holiday And Writing A Letter Home To A Friend, No One Wants A Letter That Says The Food Is Good And The Weather Is Charming And The Accommodations Comfortable. You Want To Hear About Lost Passports And Rat-filled Shacks.

Seeing The World Anew, As If It Were New, Is As Old As Writing. It's What All Painters Are Trying To Do, To See What's There, To See It In A Way That Renews It. It Becomes More And More Urgent As The Planet Gets Worn Flat And Forest After Forest Is Slain To Print The Paper For People's Impressions To Be Scrawled Down On. It Becomes Harder And Harder To Be Original, To See Things With An Innocent Eye. Innocence Is Much Tied Up With It. As The Planet Gets Progressively Less Innocent, You Need A More Innocent Eye To See It.

Novelists Tend To Go Off At 70, And I'm In A Funk About It, I've Got Myself Into A Real Paranoid Funk About It, How The Talent Dies Before The Body.