I Read In Order To Write. I

Travelers Are Fantasists, Conjurers, Seers - And What They Finally Discover Is That Every Round Object Everywhere Is A Crystal Ball: Stone, Teapot, The Marvelous Globe Of The Human Eye.

... Woman Is Frequently Praised As The More "creative" Sex. She Does Not Need To Make Poems, It Is Argued; She Has No Drive To Make Poems, Because She Is Privileged To Make Babies. A Pregnancy Is As Fulfilling As, Say, Yeats' Sailing To Byzantium.... To Call A Child A Poem May Be A Pretty Metaphor, But It Is A Slur On The Labor Of Art.

In Real Life Wishing, Divorced From Willing, Is Sterile And Begets Nothing.

Invention Despoils Observations, Insinuation Invalidates Memory. A Stewpot Of Bad Habits, All Of It - So That Imaginative Writers Wind Up, By And Large, A Shifty Crew, Sunk In Distortion, Misrepresentation, Illusion, Imposture, Fakery.

No One Can Teach Writing, But Classes May Stimulate The Urge To Write. If You Are Born A Writer, You Will Inevitably And Helplessly Write. A Born Writer Has Self-knowledge. Read, Read, Read. And If You Are A Fiction Writer, Dont Confine Yourself To Reading Fiction. Every Writer Is First A Wide Reader.