If Anybody Had Shown Me The Paperwork

If What We Want To Do Is Promote Reading And Writing And Publishing And Making Sure This Is A Business That Keeps Going - Because It Is A Business! It's Not Just An Art - Then We Have To Take Responsibility. I Get Sort Of Crazy And Frothy When I Think About This. It Really Matters.

I Am Sure Every Writer Has This And Probably Every Newscaster, That People Are Always Coming Up To Me And Saying, My Daughter Wants To Do What You Do, My Godson, My Tennis Partner.

I Believe That, More Than Anything Else, This Grief Of Constantly Having To Face Down Our Own Inadequacies Is What Keeps People From Being Writers. Forgiveness, Therefore, Is Key. I Can't Write The Book I Want To Write, But I Can And Will Write The Book I Am Capable Of Writing. Again And Again Throughout The Course Of My Life I Will Forgive Myself.

The Swedish He Knew Was Mostly From Bergman Films. He Had Learned It As A College Student, Matching The Subtitles To The Sounds. In Swedish, He Could Only Converse On The Darkest Of Subjects.

Our Friendship Was Like Our Writing In Some Ways. It Was The Only Thing That Was Interesting About Our Otherwise Dull Lives. We Were Better Off When We Were Together. Together We Were A Small Society Of Ambition And High Ideals. We Were Tender And Patient And Kind. We Were Not Like The World At All.