With Patience And Calm, Persistence And Stoicism,

I Feel That In The Past, My Style Has Shown Itself To Be Capable Of Handling Dark And Light In The Same Paragraph, Or Even In The Same Sentence. That's Something I Almost Take For Granted. I Think It Was More A Concern To Get The Details Right And Persuasively Recreate The World I Was Trying To Write About.

I Hate To See Great Works Of Literature Ghettoized, Whereas Others That Conform To The Rules, Conventions, And Procedures Of The Genre We Call Literary Fiction Get Accorded Greater Esteem And Privilege. I Also Have A Problem With How Books Are Marketed, With Certain Cover Designs And Typefaces. They're Often Stamped With An Identity That Has Nothing To Do With Their Effect On The Reader.

He Looked So Profoundly Disappointed In Me That I Wondered For A Moment If He Was Someone I Knew.

A Delicate, Inexorable Lattice Of Inferences Began To Assemble Themselves, Like A Crystal, In The Old Man's Mind, Shivering, Catching The Light In Glints And Surmises.

Along The Way, He Or She Discovers That The World Has Been Broken For As Long As Anyone Can Remember. Everyone, Sooner Or Later, Gets A Thorough Schooling In Brokenness. The Question Becomes What To Do With The Pieces?