People Have Thoughts They’d Sooner Not Have.

A Story ... Has A Sturdy Sense Of Itself Of Being Built Out Of Its Own Necessity, Not Just To Shelter Or Beguile You.

I Want The Reader To Feel Something Is Astonishing. Not The 'what Happens,' But The Way Everything Happens. These Long Short Story Fictions Do That Best, For Me.

She Could Not Explain Or Quite Understand That It Wasn't Altogether Jealousy She Felt, It Was Rage. And Not Because She Couldn't Shop Like That Or Dress Like That. It Was Because That Was What Girls Were Supposed To Be Like. That Was What Men - People, Everybody - Thought They Should Be Like. Beautiful, Treasured, Spoiled, Selfish, Pea-brained. That Was What A Girl Should Be, To Be Fallen In Love With. Then She Would Become A Mother And She'd Be All Mushily Devoted To Her Babies. Not Selfish Anymore, But Just As Pea-brained. Forever.

She Sits In Her Usual Ample Armchair, With Piles Of Books And Unopened Magazines Around Her. She Sips Cautiously From The Mug Of Weak Herb Tea Which Is Now Her Substitute For Coffee. At One Time She Thought That She Could Not Live Without Coffee, But It Turned Out That It Is Really The Warm Large Mug She Wants In Her Hands, That Is The Aid To Thought Or Whatever It Is She Practices Through The Procession Of Hours, Or Of Days.

Few People, Very Few, Have A Treasure, And If You Do You Must Hang Onto It. You Must Not Let Yourself Be Waylaid, And Have It Taken From You.