Books Demand More. You Have To Be

I've Written Books That Have Taken Me Fifteen Years, From First Sentence To Last, And Some That Only Take Three Or Four Months.

Some People Are Great, And They Approach Each Work With Honesty, And That's Wonderful. But When People Have Built Up A Sort Of Resentment Or Animosity For Reasons That Are Hard To Put Your Finger On, They Read In Bad Faith.

When I Look Back At Experience [with My Father], All I Can Do Is Feel Pity. You Know, How Torn He Was About How To Act, What To Say. And It Seems An Important Story To Me.

To Care About Words, To Have A Stake In What Is Written, To Believe In The Power Of Books - This Overwhelms The Rest, And Beside It One's Life Becomes Very Small.

Things Have Not Changed As Much As We Would Like To Think They Have. Or Maybe We're Just In Another One Of The Divided Moments In The Country. The Late '60s Certainly Was One Of Them, The Civil War Being Another, But I'm Hard-pressed To Think Of Too Many.