We Have Lived Too Long. The Great

Nothing Is Wrong With You. You're Not Different. Everybody Feels As Bad As You Do: This Is Just What Writing A Novel Feels Like. To Write A Novel Is To Come In Contact With Raw, Primal Feelings, Hopes And Longings And Psychic Wounds, And Try To Make A Big Public Word-sculpture Out Of Them, And That Is A Crazy Hard Thing To Do.

We're Wired To Expect The World To Be Brighter And More Meaningful And More Obviously Interesting Than It Actually Is. And When We Realize That It Isn't, We Start Looking Around For The Real World.

As A Teenager In Brooklyn Quentin Had Often Imagined Himself Engaged In Martial Heroics, But After This He Knew, As A Cold Immutable Fact, That He Would Do Anything Necessary, Sacrificing Whatever Or Whomever He Had To, To Avoid Risking Exposure To Physical Violence. Shame Never Came Into It. He Embraced His New Identity As A Coward. He Would Run In The Other Direction. He Would Lie Down And Cry And Put His Arms Over His Head Or Play Dead. It Didn't Matter What He Had To Do, He Would Do It And Be Glad.

I Went To College At Harvard, Then Did Three Years Of Graduate School At Yale. At Both Places I Studied Comparative Literature. People Find It Odd That I Went To Both Harvard And Yale, And I Guess It Is Odd, But That's Just What People Did Where I Grew Up.

Supposedly I've Got Traces Of An English Accent, Though I Can't Hear It. I Must Have Inherited It From My Mother, Who's English, And Then I Think It Was Exacerbated By The Fact That I Live With An Australian.