The Triumph Of Writing Fiction Is That

I Have A Feeling That Books Are A Lot Like People - They Change As You Age, So That Some Books That You Hated In High School Will Strike You With The Force Of A Revelation When You're Older.

It's Wonderful That Nothing You Write Is Ever Going To Be As Beautiful As What's In Your Head, Because That Gap Is Where The Art Can Enter And Begin To Stretch Its Limbs.

It's More Like I Write Multiple First Drafts, Handwritten. So With My First Novel, I Wrote Whole Drafts From Different Points Of View. There Are Different Versions Of That Novel In A Drawer On Loose-leaf Sheets. I Won't Even Look At The First Draft While I'm Writing The Second, And I Won't Look At The Second Before Writing The Third.

And She, The New Mother Of A Daughter, Felt A Fierceness Come Over Her That Seized At Her Heart, That Made Her Feel As If Her Bones Were Turned To Steel, As If She Could Turn Herself Into A Weapon To Keep This Daughter Of Hers From Having To Be Hurt By The World Outside The Ring Of Her Arms.

Parenthood Means Becoming Comfortable With The Fact That There Are Things Outside Your Control, Things That End And Fail, Just As Most Utopias End And By Some Measure Fail. And Just Because They're A Failure Doesn't Mean There Isn't Value There.