How Easy Life Is When It's Easy,

All I Can Tell You With Certainty Is That I, For One, Have No Self, And That I Am Unwilling Or Unable To Perpetrate Upon Myself The Joke Of A Self. What I Have Instead Is A Variety Of Impersonations I Can Do, And Not Only Of Myself - A Troupe Of Players That I Have Internalised, A Permanent Company Of Actors That I Can Call Upon When A Self Is Required. I Am A Theater And Nothing More Than A Theater.

I Don’t Ask Writers About Their Work Habits. I Really Don’t Care. Joyce Carol Oates Says Somewhere That When Writers Ask Each Other What Time They Start Working And When They Finish And How Much Time They Take For Lunch, They’re Actually Trying To Find Out, "is He As Crazy As I Am?" I Don’t Need That Question Answered.

It's Absolutely Fantastic. When I Was A Kid, My Father Was Always Trying To Tell Me How To Be A Man, And He Said To Me, I Was Maybe 9, And He Said To Me, 'philip, Whenever You Take A Nap, Take Your Clothes Off, Put A Blanket On You, And You're Going To Sleep Better.' Well, As With Everything, He Was Right. ... Then The Best Part Of It Is That When You Wake Up, For The First 15 Seconds, You Have No Idea Where You Are. You're Just Alive. That's All You Know. And It's Bliss, It's Absolute Bliss.

When I Have A First Draft, I Have A Floor Under My Feet That I Can Walk On. Then, Especially With The Help Of The Computer, Rewriting Is So Easy To Do With The Computer, Much Easier Than It Used To Be With The Typewriter. So The Books Go Through Numerous Drafts.

It's Human To Have A Secret, But It's Just As Human To Reveal It Sooner Or Later.