Self-consciousness Is The Destroyer Of Erotic Joy.

Was Everyone Else Really As Alive As She Was?...if The Answer Was Yes, Then The World, The Social World, Was Unbearably Complicated, With Two Billion Voices, And Everyone's Thoughts Striving In Equal Importance And Everyone's Claim On Life As Intense, And Everyone Thinking They Were Unique, When No One Was.

My Biggest Fear, I Think Falling From A Great Height. If I Want To Keep Myself Awake At Night I Imagine I'm On The Top Of The North Or South Tower In 9/11, Wondering Whether I'm Going To Be Burnt To Death Or I'm Going To Jump. And I Think I Would Burn To Death. And Yet I'm Impressed By The Fact That Hundreds Didn't.

What I've Discovered And Really Confirmed To Myself Is That Opera Really Likes Loud Colours, And You Need Something Bold, Something Savage, Unpredictable, Passionate. You Can't Really Run A Two-hour Opera Round Some Muted Murmuring.

You Enter A State Of Controlled Passivity, You Relax Your Grip And Accept That Even If Your Declared Intention Is To Justify The Ways Of God To Man, You Might End Up Interesting Your Readers Rather More In Satan.

I Believe The Novella Is The Perfect Form Of Prose Fiction.