I Think, For One Thing, All Of

Happened As I Listened: I Felt Pain. Not In My Head, Not In My Arm, Not In My Leg; Everywhere At Once. I Told Myself There Was No Difference Between Being “inside” And Being “outside,” That It All Came Down To X’s And O’s That Could Be Acquired In Any Number Of Different Ways, But The Pain Increased To A Point Where I Thought I Might Collapse, And I Limped Away.

Kathy Was A Republican, One Of Those People Who Used The Unforgivable Phrase "meant To Be"--usually When Describing Her Own Good Fortune Or The Disasters That Had Befallen Other People.

We Live In A Moment And A Culture When Reading Is Really Endangered. There's Simply No Way To Write Well, Though, If You're Not Reading Well.

I Write Fiction Longhand. That's Not So Much About Rejecting Technology As Being Unable To Write Fiction On A Computer For Some Reason. I Don't Think I Would Write It On A Typewriter Either. I Write In A Very Blind Gut Instinctive Way. It Just Doesn't Feel Right. There's A Physical Connection. And Then In Nonfiction That's Not The Case At All. I Can't Even Imagine Writing Nonfiction By Hand.

I Felt No Shame In These Activities, Because I Understood What Almost No One Else Seemed To Grasp: That There Was Only An Infinitesimal Difference, A Difference So Small That It Barely Existed Except As A Figment Of The Human Imagination, Between Working In A Tall Green Glass Building On Park Avenue And Collecting Litter In A Park. In Fact, There May Have Been No Difference At All.