Mystification Is Simple; Clarity Is The Hardest

One Of The Troubles Is This: The Heart Isn't Heart-shaped.

As I've Explained To My Wife Many Times, You Have To Kill Your Wife Or Mistress To Get On The Front Page Of The Papers.

Well, They Each Seem To Do One Thing Well Enough, But Fail To Realize That Literature Depends On Doing Several Things Well At The Same Time.

In Those Days, We Imagined Ourselves As Being Kept In Some Kind Of Holding Pen, Waiting To Be Released Into Our Lives. And When The Moment Came, Our Lives -- And Time Itself -- Would Speed Up. How Were We To Know That Our Lives Had In Any Case Begun, That Some Advantage Had Already Been Gained, Some Damage Already Inflicted? Also, That Our Release Would Only Be Into A Larger Holding Pen, Whose Boundaries Would Be At First Undiscernible.

You Can't Have A Novel Without Real, Believable People, And Once You Get Into Either Too Theoretical A Novel Or Too Philosophical A Novel, You Get Into The Dangers That The French Novel Has Discovered In The Past 50 Or 60 Years. And You Get Into A Sort Of Aridity. No, You Have To Have Real, Identifiable People To Whom The Reader Reacts In A Way As If They Were Real People.