The Job Of The Artist

The Life You Live In Front Of An Audience Is Like An Altered State - It's Not Totally Real. I'm Always, Even In The Course Of One Day, Trying To Find Ways To Balance Both Sides.

I Made Orange Juice From Concentrate And Showed Her The Trick Of Squeezing The Juice Of One Real Orange Into It. It Removes The Taste Of Being Frozen. She Marveled At This, And I Laughed And Said, Life Is Easy. What I Meant Was, Life Is Easy With You Here, And When You Leave, It Will Be Hard Again.

There Was Nothing In This World That Was Not A Con, Suddenly I Understood This. Nothing Really Mattered, And Nothing Could Be Lost.

After I Had My Son I Looked Everywhere For A Book That Might Serve As Some Kind Of Mirror. I Bought So Many Silly Books. Now I See What The Problem Was: I Wanted A Book About Time-about Mortality. I Can't Think Of A Writer Who Is At Once So Experimentally Daring And So Rigorously Uncompromising As Sarah Manguso. Ongoingness Is An Incredibly Elegant, Wise Book, And I Loved It.

He's Stuck At 3:14 A.m. With Only The Moon To Talk To.