Many Good Poets Are Really Essayists Who

Some After-the-fact Storytelling Is Inevitable, And, In Fact, Very Good And Useful. But Then We Want Always To Be Able To Enrich The Stories, Or Maybe Change The Stories With A Fresh Infusion Of Specificity.

A Problem That I Have With Everything Fictional Is That Writers Are Always Having To Come Up With Sudden Artillery Explosions In The Middle Of Whatever Is Going On. The Characters Are Having Interesting, Subtle Interactions, Or Jealousies, Or Whatever It Is, And Suddenly Some Gigantic Angry Eruption Has To Happen, A Giant Gasp Where Everyone Has To Scramble Around. That's The Point Where I'm Turned Off. I Want The Dynamic Range To Be A Little Smaller. I Don't Like The Big False Bangs.

E.b. White's Essays Are The Best Things I've Read About Maine - Especially The One In Which He's Not Sure If He Can Go Out Sailing Any More In His Sloop.

For Me, As A Beginning Novelist, All Other Living Writers Form A Control Group For Whom The World Is A Placebo.

Shoes Are The First Adult Machines We Are Given To Master.