All We Need To Do, Reader Or

A Game One Of My Sisters Will Play With Me In My First Year Of Being Alive Is Called Good Baby, Bad Baby. This Consists Of Being Told I Am A Good Baby Until I Smile And Laugh, Then Being Told I Am A Bad Baby Until I Burst Into Tears. This Training Will Stand Me In Good Stead All Through My Life.

Short Stories Consume You Faster. They're Connected To Brevity. With The Short Story, You Are Up Against Mortality. I Know How Tough They Are As A Form, But They're Also A Total Joy.

What Shop Did This Book Come From? She Asked. Her Father Was Looking Worried At The Cooker. He Always Got Rice Wrong. I Don't Know, Brooksie, He Said, I Don't Remember. That Was Unimaginable, Not Remembering Where A Book Has Come From! And Where It Was Bought From! That Was Part Of The Whole History, The Whole Point, Of Any Book That You Owned! And When You Picked It Up Later In The House At Home, You Knew, You Just Knew By Looking And Having It In Your Hand, Where It Came From And Where You Got It And When And Why You'd Decided To Buy It.

Do You Come To Art To Be Comforted, Or Do You Come To Art To Be Re-skinned?

I'm Blessed In My Good Friends, And Some Of Them Happen To Be Writers, Though That's Almost Never What Our Friendships Are About. And Every Writer I've Ever Read, Living Or Dead, Has In One Way Or Another Helped And Inspired. I Have A Feeling It's Important Not To Mix The Two Up.