I Was Here On Earth Because I

The Novel Remains For Me One Of The Few Forms Where We Can Record Man's Complexity And The Strength And Decency Of His Longings. Where We Can Describe, Step By Step, Minute By Minute, Our Not Altogether Unpleasant Struggle To Put Ourselves Into A Viable And Devout Relationship To Our Beloved And Mistaken World.

Wisdom We Know Is The Knowledge Of Good And Evil - Not The Strength To Choose Between The Two.

My God, The Suburbs! They Encircled The City's Boundaries Like Enemy Territory And We Thought Of Them As A Loss Of Privacy, A Cesspool Of Conformity And A Life Of Indescribable Dreariness In Some Split-level Village Where The Place Name Appeared In The New York Times Only When Some Bored Housewife Blew Off Her Head With A Shotgun.

The Task Of An American Writer Is Not To Describe The Misgivings Of A Woman Taken In Adultery As She Looks Out Of A Window At The Rain But To Describe Four Hundred People Under The Lights Reaching For A Foul Ball. This Is Ceremony.

I Do Not Understand The Capricious Lewdness Of The Sleeping Mind.