Here's A Secret. Many Novelists, If They

A Writer Should Always Feel Like He's In Over His Head

Maybe It’s Not, In The End, The Virtues Of Others That So Wrenches Our Hearts As It Is The Sense Of Almost Unbearably Poignant Recognition When We See Them At Their Most Base, In Their Sorrow And Gluttony And Foolishness. You Need The Virtues, Too—some Sort Of Virtues—but We Don’t Care About Emma Bovary Or Anna Karenina Or Raskolnikov Because They’re Good. We Care About Them Because They’re Not Admirable, Because They’re Us, And Because Great Writers Have Forgiven Them For It.

Man," He Said, "i'm Not Afraid Of Graveyards. The Dead Are Just, You Know, People Who Wanted The Same Things You And I Want." "what Do We Want?" I Asked Blurrily. "aw, Man, You Know," He Said. "we Just Want, Well, The Same Things These People Wanted." "what Was That?" He Shrugged. "to Live, I Guess," He Said.

People Are More Than You Think They Are. And They're Less, As Well. The Trick Lies In Negotiating Your Way Between The Two.

I Don't Have Any Regrets, Really, Except That One. I Wanted To Write About You, About Us, Really. Do You Know What I Mean? I Wanted To Write About Everything, The Life We're Having And The Lives We Might Have Had. I Wanted To Write About All The Ways We Might Have Died.