We Always Worry About The

I Suspect Any Serious Reader Has A First Great Book, Just The Way Anybody Has A First Kiss.

That Summer When She Was Eighteen, It Seemed Anything Could Happen, Anything At All.

She Will Remain Sane And She Will Live As She Was Meant To Live, Richly And Deeply, Among Others Of Her Kind, In Full Possession And Command Of Her Gifts.

I Don't Have Any Regrets, Really, Except That One. I Wanted To Write About You, About Us, Really. Do You Know What I Mean? I Wanted To Write About Everything, The Life We're Having And The Lives We Might Have Had. I Wanted To Write About All The Ways We Might Have Died.

At The Risk, Then, Of Being Shunned By Some Of My Gloomier Peers, I Venture To Tell You That Writers Work Like Demons, Suffer Greatly, And Are Also Happy, In Unmistakable Ways, Some Of The Time. If We Had No Knowledge Of Happiness, Our Novels Wouldn't Sufficiently Resemble Real Life. Some Of Us Are Even Made A Little Bit Happy, On Occasion, By The Writing Process Itself. I Mean, Really, If There Wasn't Some Sort Of Enjoyment To Be Derived, Would Any Of Us Keep Doing It?