I Have Thought For A Long Time

What Shop Did This Book Come From? She Asked. Her Father Was Looking Worried At The Cooker. He Always Got Rice Wrong. I Don't Know, Brooksie, He Said, I Don't Remember. That Was Unimaginable, Not Remembering Where A Book Has Come From! And Where It Was Bought From! That Was Part Of The Whole History, The Whole Point, Of Any Book That You Owned! And When You Picked It Up Later In The House At Home, You Knew, You Just Knew By Looking And Having It In Your Hand, Where It Came From And Where You Got It And When And Why You'd Decided To Buy It.

I'm Blessed In My Good Friends, And Some Of Them Happen To Be Writers, Though That's Almost Never What Our Friendships Are About. And Every Writer I've Ever Read, Living Or Dead, Has In One Way Or Another Helped And Inspired. I Have A Feeling It's Important Not To Mix The Two Up.

Do You Come To Art To Be Comforted, Or Do You Come To Art To Be Re-skinned?

Nothing Is Harmful To Literature Except Censorship, And That Almost Never Stops Literature Going Where It Wants To Go Either, Because Literature Has A Way Of Surpassing Everything That Blocks It And Growing Stronger For The Exercise.

I Don't Want A Tombstone. You Could Carve On It 'she Never Actually Wanted A Tombstone.'