I Like To Break Left When People

There Was Something In The Pages Of These Books That Had The Power To Make Him Feel Better About Things, A Life Raft To Cling To Before The Dark Currents Of Memory Washed Him Downstream Again, And On Brighter Days, He Could Even See Himself Going On This Way For Some Time. A Small But Passable Life. And Then, Of Course, The End Of The World Happened.

I Came To Houston For A Job, The Reason Most People Move Halfway Across The Country With A First Grader And A Five-week-old. I Came Here To Teach At Rice.

That Literary-popular Distinction Is, In My View, Vastly Overstated. At The Far Poles There Are Clearly Books That Are Purely Commercial And Purely Literary, Written For Audiences That Want To See The Same Thing Enacted Over And Over And Over Again. But The Middle Is Where Most People Read And Most People Write.

Every Book Has Got Its Challenges. You Run Into A Plot Point That You Can't Figure Out, Or A Scene That You Struggle To Write And Have To Write 50 Times.

Rust, Corrosion, Wind, Rain. The Nibbling Teeth Of Mice And The Acrid Droppings Of Insects And The Devouring Jaws Of Years. The Was Of Nature Upon Machines, Of The Planet's Chaotic Forces Upon The Works Of Humankind. The Energy That Man Had Pulled From The Earth Was Being Inexorably Pulled Back Into It, Sucked Like Water Down A Drain. Before Long, If It Hadn't Happened Already, Not A Single High-tension Pole Would Be Left Standing On The Earth. Mankind Had Built A World That Would Take A Hundred Years To Die. A Century For The Last Light To Go Out.