Look At Me. My Concerns-are They Spiritual,

I Know When A Story Is Finished When There Is Not A Single Thing More I Can Think To Do To It. And Since I Know At The Start What The Last Line Will Be, I Know When I've Reached That Point As Logically As I Can That It's Finished. As For The Rewriting-it's Not Foolproof, Of Course, But If You're Honest About Having Thought Of Every Possibility And You Still Come Back To What You Have, What More Can You Do?

Obviously, In Journalism, You're Confined To What Happens. And The Tendency To Embellish, To Mythologize, It's In Us. It Makes Things More Interesting, A Closer Call. But Journalism Taught Me How To Write A Sentence That Would Make Someone Want To Read The Next One.

I Could Claim Any Number Of High-flown Reasons For Writing, Just As You Can Explain Certain Dogs Behavior... But Maybe, It’s That They’re Dog, And That’s What Dogs Do.

I Have Written Letters That Are Failures, But I Have Written Few, I Think, That Are Lies. Trying To Reach A Person Means Asking The Same Question Over And Over Again: Is This The Truth, Or Not? I Begin This Letter To You, Then, In The Western Tradition. If I Understand It, The Western Tradition Is: Put Your Cards On The Table.

And I See That Not Touching For So Long Was A Drive To The Beach With The Windows Rolled Up So The Waves Feel That Much Colder.