For Me, A Page Of Good Prose

Children Drown, Beautiful Women Are Mangled In Automobile Accidents, Cruise Ships Founder, And Men Die Lingering Deaths In Mines And Submarines, But You Will Find None Of This In My Accounts.

For Me A Page Of Good Prose Is Where One Hears The Rain. A Page Of Good Prose Is When One Hears The Noise Of Battle.... A Page Of Good Prose Seems To Me The Most Serious Dialogue That Well-informed And Intelligent Men And Women Carry On Today In Their Endeavor To Make Sure That The Fires Of This Planet Burn Peaceably.

Homesickness Is . . . Absolutely Nothing. Fifty Percent Of The People In The World Are Homesick All The Time. . . . You Don't Really Long For Another Country. You Long For Something In Yourself That You Don't Have, Or Haven't Been Able To Find.

The Novel Remains For Me One Of The Few Forms Where We Can Record Man's Complexity And The Strength And Decency Of His Longings.

Sometimes The Easiest-seeming Stories To A Reader Are The Hardest Kind To Write.