You Cannot Find Peace By Avoiding Life,

Venture Too Far For Love, She Tells Herself, And You Renounce Citizenship In The Country You've Made For Yourself.

There Is Just This For Consolation: An Hour Here Or There, When Our Lives Seem, Against All Odds And Expectations, To Burst Open And Give Us Everything We've Ever Imagined , Though Everyone But Children (and Perhaps Even They) Knows These Hours Will Inevitably Be Followed By Others, Far Darker And More Difficult. Still, We Cherish The City, The Morning, We Hope, More Than Anything, For More. Heaven Only Knows Why We Love It So.

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.

I Feel Like There's Something Terrible And Wonderful And Amazing That's Just Beyond My Grasp. I Have Dreams About It. I Do Dream, By The Way. It Hovers Over Me At Odd Moments. And Then It's Gone. I Feel Like I'm Always On The Brink Of Something That Never Arrives. I Want To Either Have It Or Be Free Of It.

If She Were Religious, She Would Call It The Soul. It Is More Than The Sum Of Her Intellect And Her Emotions, More Than The Sum Of Her Experiences, Though It Runs Like Veins Of Brilliant Metal Through All Three. It Is An Inner Faculty That Recognizes The Animating Mysteries Of The World Because It Is Made Of The Same Substance