I Didn't Want To Be A Boy,

Every Artist Seems To Me To Have The Job Of Bearing Witness To The World We Live In. To Some Extent I Think Of All Of Us As Artists, Because We Have Voices And We Are Each Of Us Unique.

I've Never Been Resigned To Ready-made Ideas As I Was To Ready-made Clothes, Perhaps Because Although I Couldn't Sew, I Could Think.

The Kinds Of Good Friends I Have Are People Who Are Perfectly Willing To Have Me Say I'll See Them In Six Months, And Live Right Next Door.

It's Not The Length But The Quality Of Life That Matters To Me. It Has Always Been Important To Me To Write One Sentence At A Time, To Live Every Day As If It Were My Last And Judge It In Those Terms, Often Badly, Not Because It Lacked Grand Gesture Or Grand Passion But Because It Failed In The Daily Virtues Of Self-discipline, Kindness, And Laughter. It Is Love, Very Ordinary, Human Love, And Not Fear, Which Is The Good Teacher And The Wisest Judge.

Morality For The Novelist Is Expressed Not So Much In The Choice Of Subject Matter As In The Plot Of The Narrative, Which Is Perhaps Why In Our Morally Bewildered Time Novelists Have Often Been Timid About Plot.