Terror Is Now The World Narrative, Unquestionably.

Every Sentence Has A Truth Waiting At The End Of It And The Writer Learns How To Know It When He Finally Gets There. On One Level This Truth Is The Swing Of The Sentence, The Beat And Poise, But Down Deeper It's The Integrity Of The Writer As He Matches With The Language. I've Always Seen Myself In Sentences. I Begin To Recognize Myself, Word By Word, As I Work Through A Sentence. The Language Of My Books Has Shaped Me As A Man. There's A Moral Force In A Sentence When It Comes Out Right. It Speaks The Writer's Will To Live.

Naturally A Direct Comparison Of Terrorist And Novelist Is Complete Nonsense. But There Was Once A Time When The Novelist Also Had Some Influence On How His Contemporaries Thought, The Way They Saw The World, The Way They Lived.

A Novel Determines Its Own Size And Shape And I've Never Tried To Stretch An Idea Beyond The Frame And Structure It Seemed To Require.

Eye Contact Was A Delicate Matter. A Quarter Second Of A Shared Glance Was A Violation Of Agreements That Made The City Operational.

In Fiction, I Tend To Write Fairly Realistic Dialogue-not Always, And It Tends To Vary From Book To Book. But In Many Books, There Is A Colloquialism Of Address. The Characters Will Speak In A Quite Idiosyncratic Way Sometimes.