Mystification Is Simple; Clarity Is The Hardest

You Grew Old First Not In Your Own Eyes, But In Other People's Eyes; Then, Slowly, You Agreed With Their Opinion Of You.

I'm One Of Those Writers Who Started Off Writing Novels And Came To Writing Short Stories Later, Partly Because I Didn't Have The Right Ideas, Partly Because I Think That Short Stories Are More Difficult. I Think Learning To Write Short Stories Also Made Me Attracted Toward A Paring Down Of The Novel Form.

Reading Is A Majority Skill But A Minority Art.

When You Read A Great Book, You Don’t Escape From Life, You Plunge Deeper Into It. There May Be A Superficial Escape – Into Different Countries, Mores, Speech Patterns – But What You Are Essentially Doing Is Furthering Your Understanding Of Life’s Subtleties, Paradoxes, Joys, Pains And Truths. Reading And Life Are Not Separate But Symbiotic.

We Live In Time, It Bounds Us And Defines Us, And Time Is Supposed To Measure History, Isn't It? But If We Can't Understand Time, Can't Grasp Its Mysteries Of Pace And Progress, What Chance Do We Have With History--even Our Own Small, Personal, Largely Undocumented Piece Of It?