People Were Incredibly Kind To Our Family

People Aren't Quite Sure What It Means When A Book Is A Booker Prize Winner. They're Not Quite Sure What Is Being Recommended, What Literary Values It Stands For, Because Every Year It Stands For Something Different.

We All Live Inside Bodies That Will Deteriorate. But When You Look At Human Beings, They're Capable Of Very Decent Things: Love, Loyalty. When Time Is Running Out, They Don't Care About Possessions Or Status. They Want To Put Things Right If They've Done Wrong.

And What Made These Heart-to-hearts Possible--you Might Even Say What Made The Whole Friendship Possible During That Time--was This Understanding We Had That Anything We Told Each Other During These Moments Would Be Treated With Careful Respect: That We'd Honor Confidences, And That No Matter How Much We Rowed, We Wouldn't Use Against Each Other Anything We'd Talked About During Those Sessions.

I Quizzed Him A Lot On This Point And I Suspect The Truth Was That It Was Like A Lot Of Things At That Age: You Don't Have Any Clear Reason, You Just Do It. You Do It Because You Think It Might Get A Laugh, Or Because You Want To See If It'll Cause A Stir. And When You're Asked To Explain Afterwards, It Doesn't Seem To Make Any Sense.

My Donors Have Always Tended To Do Much Better Than Expected.