What Interests Me In Writing A Novel

Later - When Things Happened That They Could Never Have Imagined - She Wrote Him A Letter That Said: When Will You Learn That There Isn't A Word For Everything

I Have Realised Just How Important It Is To Readers To Feel That Fictional Stories Are Based On Reality.

Only Later Did I Come To Understand That To Be A Mother Is To Be An Illusion. No Matter How Vigilant, In The End A Mother Can't Protect Her Child - Not From Pain, Or Horror, Or The Nightmare Of Violence, From Sealed Trains Moving Rapidly In The Wrong Direction, The Depravity Of Strangers, Trapdoors, Abysses, Fires, Cars In The Rain, From Chance.

There Is A Fallacy That The Powerful Emotion Of Youth Mellows With Time. Not True. One Learns To Control And Suppress It. But It Doesn't Lessen. It Simply Hides And Concentrates Itself In More Discreet Places. When One Accidentally Stumbles Into One Of These Abysses, The Pain Is Spectacular.

I Walked Down My Snow Covered Street. Out Of Habit I Turned And Checked For My Footsteps. When I Arrived At My Building I Looked For My Name On The Buzzers. And Because I Know That Sometimes I See Things That Aren't There, After Dinner I Called Information To Ask If I Was Listed.(25)