All Beginnings Are Hard.

No One Knows He Is Fortunate Until He Becomes Unfortunate, That's The Way The World Is.

I Think Most Serious Writers, Certainly In The Modern Period, Use Their Own Lives Or The Lives Of People Close To Them Or Lives They Have Heard About As The Raw Material For Their Creativity.

Literature Presents You With Alternate Mappings Of The Human Experience. You See That The Experiences Of Other People And Other Cultures Are As Rich, Coherent, And Troubled As Your Own Experiences. They Are As Beset With Suffering As Yours. Literature Is A Kind Of Legitimate Voyeurism Through The Keyhole Of Language Where You Really Come To Know Other People's Lives--their Anguish, Their Loves, Their Passions. Often You Discover That Once You Dive Into Those Lives And Get Below The Surface, The Veneer, There Is A Real Closeness.

I'm Constantly Revising. Once The Book Is Written And Typed, I Go Through The Entire Draft Again.

The Span Of A Man's Life - That Is Nothing. But What A Man Makes Of That Span - That Is Something. A Man Must Make His Own Meaning For Life. Meaning Is Not Automatically Given To Life.