There Is A Beauty In The World,

There's The Fact That American Fiction Is Basically The Most Apolitical Fiction On The Globe. A South American Writer Wouldn't Dare Think Of Writing A Novel If It Didn't Allude To The System Into Which These People Are Orchestrated - Or An Eastern European Writer, Or A Russian Writer, Or A Chinese Writer. Only American Writers Are Able To Imagine That The Government And The Corporations - All Of It - Seem To Have No Effect Whatsoever.

She'd Never Imagined It Like This-when She Thought Of Someone (a Woman Like Herself)losing Her Mind, She'd Imagined Shrieks And Wails, Hallucinations; But At That Moment It Had Seemed Clear That There Was Another Way, Far Quieter; A Way That Was Numb And Hopeless, Flat, So Much So That An Emotion As Strong As Sorrow Would Have Been A Relief.

We Throw Our Parties; We Abandon Our Families To Live Alone In Canada; We Struggle To Write Books That Do Not Change The World, Despite Our Gifts And Our Unstinting Efforts, Our Most Extravagant Hopes. We Live Our Lives, Do Whatever We Do, And Then We Sleep--it's As Simple And Ordinary As That. A Few Jump Out Of Windows Or Drown Themselves Or Take Pills; More Die By Accident; And Most Of Us, The Vast Majority, Are Slowly Devoured By Some Disease Or, If We're Very Fortunate, By Time Itself.

But There Are Still The Hours, Aren't There? One And Then Another, And You Get Through That One And Then, My God, There's Another.

He Wanted To Tell Her That He Was Inspired And Vigilant And Recklessly Alone, That His Body Contained His Unsteady Heart And Something Else, Something He Felt But Could Not Describe: Porous And Spiky, Shifting With Flecks Of Thought, With Urge And Memory; Salted With Brightness, Flickerings Of White And Green And Pale Gold; Something That Loved Stars Because It Was Made Of The Same Substance.