As Long As My Sixth Graders Showed

There's A Unique Bond Of Trust Between Readers And Authors That I Don't Believe Exists In Any Other Art Form; As A Reader, I Trust A Novelist To Give Me His Or Her Best Effort, However Flawed.

She Had Always Felt That The Essence Of Human Experience Lay Not Primarily In The Peak Experiences, The Wedding Days And Triumphs Which Stood Out In The Memory Like Dates Circled In Red On Old Calendars, But, Rather, In The Unself-conscious Flow Of Little Things - The Weekend Afternoon With Each Member Of The Family Engaged In His Or Her Own Pursuit, Their Crossings And Connections Casual, Dialogues Imminently Forgettable, But The Sum Of Such Hours Creating A Synergy Which Was Important And Eternal.

You've Probably Heard About The Theory Of Steam-engine Time - That Even After The Steam Engine Had Been Invented, It Had To Wait Until People Were Ready To Make Use Of It. The Same Thing Happens In Literary Circles. The Truth Is, I'm Not Terribly Interested In Victorian Times; I'm Interested In Victorian Writers. I'm Interested In Most Eras Of History, But Not The Victorian Era Especially. I Was Interested In The John Franklin Expedition. I Was Interested In These Last Five Weird Years Of Dickens' Life. And I Just Have To Take The Age That Comes With All That When I Write About It.

The Life Of A Poet Lies Not Merely In The Finite Language-dance Of Expression But In The Nearly Infinite Combinations Of Perception And Memory Combined With The Sensitivity To What Is Perceived And Remembered.

You Treat Violence As An Aberration ... When In Truth It Is The Norm. It Is The Very Essence Of The Human Condition.