Nothing Is Ever Quite As Bad As

A Love Affair Begins With A Fantasy. For Instance, That The Beloved Will Always Be There.

I Assemble Stories-me And A Hundred Million Other People-at The Sentence Level. Not By Coming Up With A Sweeping Story Line.

I Know That Homes Burn And That You Should Think What To Save Before They Start To. Not Because, In The Heat Of It, Everything Looks As Valuable As Everything Else. But, Because Nothing Looks Worth The Bother, Not Even Your Life.

Journalism Taught Me How To Write A Sentence That Would Make Someone Want To Read The Next One. You Are Trained To Get Rid Of Anything Nonessential. You Go In, You Start Writing Your Article, Assuming A Person's Going To Stop Reading The Minute You Give Them A Reason. So The Trick Is: Don't Give Them One.

We Can Only Die In The Future, I Thought; Right Now We Are Always Alive.