Writing Is One Of The Most Assertive

The First Sentence Of A Book Is A Handshake, Perhaps An Embrace. Style And Personality Are Irrelevant. They Can Be Formal Or Casual. They Can Be Tall Or Short Or Fat Or Thin. They Can Obey The Rules Or Break Them. But They Need To Contain A Charge. A Live Current, Which Shocks And Illuminates.

The Most Compelling Narrative, Expressed In Sentences With Which I Have No Chemical Reaction, Or An Adverse One, Leaves Me Cold.

And Yet She Could Not Forgive Herself. Even As An Adult, She Wished Only That She Could Go Back And Change Things: The Ungainly Things She’d Worn, The Insecurity She’d Felt, All The Innocent Mistakes She Made.

Isolation Offered Its Own Form Of Companionship

She Watched His Lips Forming The Words, At The Same Time She Heard Them Under Her Skin, Under Her Winter Coat, So Near And Full Of Warmth That She Felt Herself Go Hot.