Art Is Whether Or Not There Is

We Live Less Than The Time It Takes To Blink An Eye, If We Measure Our Lives Against Eternity. So It May Be Asked What Value Is There To A Human Life. There Is So Much Pain In The World. What Does It Mean To Have To Suffer So Much, If Our Lives Are Nothing More Than The Blink Of An Eye?...i Learned A Long Time Ago, Reuven, That A Blink Of An Eye In Itself Is Nothing; But The Eye That Blinks, That Is Something.

Literature Presents You With Alternate Mappings Of The Human Experience. You See That The Experiences Of Other People And Other Cultures Are As Rich, Coherent, And Troubled As Your Own Experiences. They Are As Beset With Suffering As Yours. Literature Is A Kind Of Legitimate Voyeurism Through The Keyhole Of Language Where You Really Come To Know Other People's Lives--their Anguish, Their Loves, Their Passions. Often You Discover That Once You Dive Into Those Lives And Get Below The Surface, The Veneer, There Is A Real Closeness.

Art Begins . . . When Someone Interprets, When Someone Sees The World Through His Own Eyes. Art Happens When What Is Seen Becomes Mixed With The Inside Of The Person Who Is Seeing It.

He Taught Them That The Purpose Of A Man Is To Make His Life Holy--every Aspect Of His Life: Eating, Drinking Praying, Sleeping. God Is Everywhere, He Told Them, And If It Seems At Times That He Is Hidden From Us, It Is Only Because We Have Not Yet Learned To Seek Him Correctly.

To The Extent That I Come From A Deeply Religious Tradition And Have Been Contending With Those Beginnings All Of My Life - That Constitutes The Subject Of Much Of My Early Fiction.