You Get Towards The End Of Life

We Thought We Were Being Mature When We Were Only Being Safe. We Imagined We Were Being Responsible But Were Only Being Cowardly. What We Called Realism Turned Out To Be A Way Of Avoiding Things Rather Than Facing Them.

How Often Do We Tell Our Own Life Story? How Often Do We Adjust, Embellish, Make Sly Cuts? And The Longer Life Goes On, The Fewer Are Those Around To Challenge Our Account, To Remind Us That Our Life Is Not Our Life, Merely The Story We Have Told About Our Life. Told To Others, But — Mainly — To Ourselves.

Grief Reconfigures Time, Its Length, Its Texture, Its Function: One Day Means No More Than The Next, So Why Have They Been Picked Out And Given Separate Names?

I'm A Novelist, So I Can't Write About Ideas Unless They're Attached To People.

The Writer Has Little Control Over Personal Temperament, None Over Historical Moment, And Is Only Partly In Charge Of His Or Her Own Aesthetic.