Fiction Is Experimentation; When It Ceases To

The Fear Of Death Is For All Of Us Everywhere, But For The Great Intelligence Of The Opium Eater It Is Beautifully Narrowed Into The Crux Of Drugs.

I Was Born Into No True Class And It Was My Decision Early In Life To Insinuate Myself Into The Middle Class Like A Spy So That I Would Have An Advantageous Position Of Attack, But I Seem Now And Then To Have Forgotten My Mission, And To Have Taken My Disguises Too Seriously.

The Task Of An American Writer Is Not To Describe The Misgivings Of A Woman Taken In Adultery As She Looks Out Of A Window At The Rain But To Describe Four Hundred People Under The Lights Reaching For A Foul Ball. This Is Ceremony.

Who Reads Short Stories? One Is Asked, And I Like To Think That They Are Read By Men And Women In The Dentist's Office, Waiting To Be Called To The Chair; They Are Read On Transcontinental Plane Trips Instead Of Watching Banal And Vulgar Films Spin Out The Time Between Our Coasts; They Are Read By Discerning And Well-informed Men And Women Who Seem To Feel That Narrative Fiction Can Contribute To Our Understanding Of One Another And The Sometimes Bewildering World Around Us.

Admite The World. Relish The Love Of A Gentle Woman. Trust In The Lord.