I Do My Best Work Under Pressure,

When I Write I Am Trying To Express My Way Of Being In The World. This Is Primarily A Process Of Elimination: Once You Have Removed All The Dead Language, The Second-hand Dogma, The Truths That Are Not Your Own But Other People's, The Mottos, The Slogans, The Out-and-out Lies Of Your Nation, The Myths Of Your Historical Moment - Once You Have Removed All That Warps Experience Into A Shape You Do Not Recognise And Do Not Believe In - What You Are Left With Is Something Approximating The Truth Of Your Own Conception.

The Choices A Writer Makes Within A Tradition - Preferring Milton To Moliere, Caring For Barth Over Barthelme - Constitute Some Of The Most Personal Information We Can Have About Him.

Last Year, When Zora Was A Freshman, Sophomores Had Seemed Altogether A Different Kind Of Human: So Very Definite In Their Tastes And Opinions, In Ther Loves And Ideas. Zora Woke Up This Morning Hopeful That A Transformation Of This Kind Might Have Visited Her In The Night, But, Finding It Hadn't, She Did What Girls Generally Do When They Don't Feel The Part: She Dressed It Instead.

Greeting Cards Routinely Tell Us Everybody Deserves Love. No. Everybody Deserves Clean Water. Not Everybody Deserves Love All The Time.

The Novel Leads You Places That You Never Could Have Gotten To Otherwise.