When You Are Writing Fiction

Memory Is Identity....you Are What You Have Done; What You Have Done Is In Your Memory; What You Remember Defines Who You Are; When You Forget Your Life You Cease To Be, Even Before Your Death.

He Thought Of Trying To Explain Something He Had Recently Noticed About Himself: That If Anyone Insulted Him, Or One Of His Friends, He Didn't Really Mind--or Not Much, Anyway. Whereas If Anyone Insulted A Novel, A Story, A Poem That He Loved, Something Visceral And Volcanic Occurred Within Him. He Wasn't Sure What This Might Mean--except Perhaps That He Had Got Life And Art Mixed Up, Back To Front, Upside Down.

We Live In Time, It Bounds Us And Defines Us, And Time Is Supposed To Measure History, Isn't It? But If We Can't Understand Time, Can't Grasp Its Mysteries Of Pace And Progress, What Chance Do We Have With History--even Our Own Small, Personal, Largely Undocumented Piece Of It?

Perhaps The World Progresses Not By Maturing, But By Being In A Permanent State Of Adolescence, Of Thrilled Discovery.

The Writer Must Be Universal In Sympathy And An Outcast By Nature: Only Then Can He See Clearly.