I'm Not A Natural Criticizer - I

Honestly, The Choice Is: I Can Be A Cheerful Person, More Awake To Correction, More Of A Force For Good ... When I'm Writing. Or I Can Be The Opposite Of All Those Things, When I'm Not Writing.

If You're Going To Make An Emotional Connection With Somebody, Whether It's In The Story Or In The World, There's A Certain Amount Of Self-acceptance That Is Required.

The Writer, In Order To Proceed, Is Theoretically Trying To Predict Where His Complex Skein Of Language And Image Has Left His Reader, Who He Has Likely Never Met And Who Is Actually Thousands Of Readers.

The Idea Is That What An Artist Lives Through Should Broaden His Notion Of What It Is Possible For A Human Being To Live Through, And That New Understanding Should Then Get Into And Expand The Work.

As Much As We - In A Revisionist Way - Tell Ourselves That We've Always Been A Righteous Country With A Couple Of Swerves Off The Path, We Need To Look Back And See That We've Always Also Been A Racist Country And Have Had A Tendency Towards Banal Aggressiveness. The Thing That's Alarming Is Not So Much That A Few People In America At The Top Are Initiating These Crazy Policies, But That The Middle Is Willing To Go There Too. There's A Strange Movement Of The Middle To This Position Of Banal Aggressiveness.