You Know You Are Truly Alive When

When In The End, The Day Came On Which I Was Going Away, I Learned The Strange Learning That Things Can Happen Which We Ourselves Cannot Possibly Imagine, Either Beforehand, Or At The Time When They Are Taking Place, Or Afterwards When We Look Back On Them.

The Flamingoes Are The Most Delicately Colored Of All The African Birds, Pink And Red Like A Flying Twig Of An Oleander Bush. They Have Incredibly Long Legs And Bizarre And Recherché Curves Of Their Necks And Bodies, As If From Some Exquisite Traditional Prudery They Were Making All Attitudes And Movements In Life As Difficult As Possible.

You Know You Are Truly Alive When You’re Living Among Lions.

Here And There, In Some Older Houses, Old Faded Daguerreotypes Still Hang On The Walls... They Seem To Us To Be Very Simple... Compared With The Artistic And Skillful Portraits Made In Later Days... Here Was A Photograph That At One Time Had Been The Last Word, A Very Modern Portrait... Today It Is Just A Part Of Cultural History. The Small Yellowed Surface Has Acquired Depth, An Admonishing Perspective. We Hold In Our Hand A Symbol Of The Structure And Ideology Of An Epoch.

I Start With A Tingle, A Kind Of Feeling Of The Story I Will Write. Then Come The Characters, And They Take Over, They Make The Story.