I'm Always Happy," Sasha Said. "sometimes I

There's Something Very Strange About Associating Me With That Prize. I Had Hoped For It In A More Directed Way As A Journalist. Somehow As A Journalist You Know There Are Pulitzers Out There And You Can Work Hard And Get One. To Win It For Fiction Seems Unbelievable.

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Music And Time Have Such An Interesting Relationship. Music Makes Time Fall Away Like Almost Nothing Else. You Hear A Song From Another Moment Of Your Life And It Really Is Like You're Still There. That's Why The Music Of Our Youth Ends Up Being Particularly Powerful. The Coming Of Age Music That You Grab A Hold Of As The Symbol Or The Expression Of Your Independence And Hopes For The Future And Anger And Rebellion Or Whatever It Is You're Feeling Is So Powerful For The Rest Of Your Life When You Hear It.

At Night, The House Thick With Sleep, She Would Peer Out Her Bedroom Window At The Trees And Sky And Feel The Presence Of A Mystery. Some Possibility That Included Her--separate From Her Present Life And Without Its Limitations. A Secret. Riding In The Car With Her Father, She Would Look Out At Other Cars Full Of People She'd Never Seen, Any One Of Whom She Might Someday Meet And Love, And Would Feel The World Holding Her Making Its Secret Plans.

The Average Person Might Articulate Them Differently, But We All Think About Interpersonal Relationships In One Way Or Another. Writers Just Express That In Different Ways And Capture It In Different Ways. To Some Degree, We're All Thinking About The Same Things. It's The Zeitgeist. The Trick, In A Way, As A Writer, Is To Hope That Your Interests In Some Sense Link Up With The Culture Around You.