What Do You Do When You're No

Here's A Secret. Many Novelists, If They Are Pressed And If They Are Being Honest, Will Admit That The Finished Book Is A Rather Rough Translation Of The Book They'd Intended To Write.

How We Dress Is, As Far As I Can Tell, The Only Inescapably Public Choice That We Have. People Don't Need To Know What You Eat, People Don't Need To Know Who You Have Sex With. But There's No Escaping What You Wear And The Fact That You've Chosen It. Even If You Insist That You Don't Care About Fashion, That's Your Statement. It's Really One Realm Of Life Where You Are Forced To Make Your Own Statement.

I Revise Constantly, As I Go Along And Then Again After I've Finished A First Draft. Few Of My Novels Contain A Single Sentence That Closely Resembles The Sentence I First Set Down. I Just Find That I Have To Keep Zapping And Zapping The English Language Until It Starts To Behave In Some Way That Vaguely Matches My Intentions.

He Insists On A Version Of You That Is Funnier, Stranger, More Eccentric And Prfound Thatn You Suspect Yourself To Be--capable Of Doing More Good And More Harm In The World Than You've Ever Imagined--it Is All But Impossible Not To Believe, At Least In His Presence And A While After You've Left Him, That He Alone Sees Through Your Essence, Weighs Your True Qualities . . . And Appreciates You More Fully Than Anyone Else Ever Has.

I Don't Know If I Can Face This. You Know. The Party And The Ceremony, And Then The Hour After That, And The Hour After That." "you Don't Have To Go To The Party. You Don't Have To Go To The Ceremony. You Don't Have To Do Anything At All." "but There Are Still The Hours, Aren't There? One And Then Another, And You Get Through That One And Then, My God, There's Another. I'm So Sick.