One Of The Troubles Is This: The

You Can Define A Net Two Ways, Depending On Your Point Of View. Normally You Would Say It Is A Meshed Instrument Designed To Catch Fish. But You Could, With No Great Injury To Logic, Reverse The Image And Define The Net As A Jocular Lexicographer Once Did: He Called It A Collection Of Holes Tied Together With String.

The Better You Know Someone, The Less Well You Often See Them (and The Less Well They Can Therefore Be Transferred Into Fiction). They May Be So Close As To Be Out Of Focus, And There Is No Operating Novelist To Dispel The Blur.

Nature Is So Exact, It Hurts Exactly As Much As It Is Worth, So In A Way One Relishes The Pain. If It Didn't Matter, It Wouldn't Matter.

The Writer's Life [is] Full Of Frailty And Defeat Like Any Other Life. What Counts Is The Work. Yet The Work Can Quite Easily Be Buried, Or Half-buried, By The Life.

A Pier Is A Disappointed Bridge; Yet Stare At It For Long Enough And You Can Dream It To The Other Side Of The Channel.