People Think About Who They Are In

Hardship Makes The World Obscure.

Every Advance In Knowledge And Technique Is Matched By A New Kind Of Death, A New Strain. Death Adapts, Like A Viral Agent.

He Wanted Paper And Something To Write With, Some Way To Sustain A Thought, To Place It In The World.

History Was Not A Matter Of Missing Minutes On The Tape. I Did Not Stand Helpless Before It. I Hewed To The Texture Of Collected Knowledge, Took Faith From The Solid And Availing Stuff Of Our Experience. Even If We Believe That History Is A Workwheel Powered By Human Blood -- Read The Speeches Of Mussolini -- At Least We've Known The Thing Together. A Single Narrative Sweep, Not Ten Thousand Wisps Of Disinformation. (82)

I Felt Joyce Was An Influence On My Fiction, But In A Very General Way, As A Kind Of Inspiration And A Model For The Beauty Of Language.