If I Retain Any Freshness Of Approach,

(such A Life)engaged Gross Quantities Of Hope And Despair And Set Them Wildly Side By Side, Like A Third World Country Of The Heart.

A Funny Line Can Never Exist On Its Own. It Needs To Be Surrounded By Mood And Circumstances.

If Prose Can Cast A Spell, We Will Listen To It No Matter What It's Saying. If A Narrative Uses Language In A Magical And Enlivening Way, We Will Listen To The Story. But If The Language Doesn't Cast A Spell, We Will Listen To It Only If It Is Telling Us Something That Actually Happened.

Blasts From The Past Were Like The Rooms One Entered And Re-entered In Dreams: They Would Not Stay Nailed Down. When You Returned To Them, They Had Changed - They Suddenly Had More Space Or A Tilt Or A Door That Had Not Been There Before. New People Were Milling Around, The Floors Undulated, And The Sun Shone Newly, Strangely In The Windows, Or Through The Now Blasted-open Ceiling, Or Else It Shone Not At All, As If Having Fled The Sky.

It Was Not Miserable - Often I Did Not Miss Her At All. But There Was Sometimes A Quick, Sinking Ache When I Walked In The Door And Saw She Was Not There. Twice, However, I'd Felt The Same Sinking Feeling When She Was.