Sometimes I Ask Myself If Writing Novels

One Should Never Turn One's Back On A Vivid Imagination.

That Is What Is Wrong With Cold People. Not That They Have Ice In Their Souls - We All Have A Bit Of That - But That They Insist Every Word And Deed Mirror That Ice. They Never Learn The Beauty Or Value Of Gesture. The Emotional Necessity. For Them, It Is All Honesty Before Kindness, Truth Before Art. Love Is Art, Not Truth. It's Like Painting Scenery.

If Prose Can Cast A Spell, We Will Listen To It No Matter What It's Saying. If A Narrative Uses Language In A Magical And Enlivening Way, We Will Listen To The Story. But If The Language Doesn't Cast A Spell, We Will Listen To It Only If It Is Telling Us Something That Actually Happened.

When You Find Out Who You Are, You Will No Longer Be Innocent. That Will Be Sad For Others To See. All That Knowledge Will Show On Your Face And Change It. But Sad Only For Others, Not For Yourself. You Will Feel You Have A Kind Of Wisdom, Very Mistaken, But A Mistake Of Some Power To You And So You Will Sadly Treasure It And Grow It.

People Love Gossip Because It's Slightly Removed From Actuality. It's A Very Literary Thing... You Can Hear A Great Story, And It Turns Out That It's Largely Not True. Fiction Writing Is Like Gossip. It's Not Malicious Gossip, But It's Gossip.