I Was The Goldfish That Leapt Out

I Don't Know What Makes A Writer's Voice. It's Dozens Of Things. There Are People Who Write Who Don't Have It. They're Tone-deaf, Even Though They're Very Fluent. It's An Ability, Like Anything Else, Being A Doctor Or A Veterinarian, Or A Musician.

Literature Is The Province Of Imagination, And Stories, In Whatever Guise, Are Meditations On Life.

It Was Hard To Reassure Grown-ups When You Weren't Certain Yourself What You Were Feeling And Thinking—when Thoughts Dissolved Before You Could Name Them.

People Steal Into One's Consciousness And Occupy What Seems, In Retrospect, To Have Been Their Place All Along.

Labels Not Only Free Us From The Obligation To Think Creatively; They Numb Our Sensibilities, Our Power To Feel. During The Vietnam War, The Phrase Body Count Entered Our Vocabulary. It Is An Ambiguous Phrase, Inorganic, Even Faintly Sporty. It Distanced Us From The Painful Reality Of Corpses, Of Dead, Mutilated People.