Every Artist Seems To Me To Have

Charity Is A Cop-out So Traditionally Female In Its Apparent Self-effacement That There Seems Resonant Comfort In It. We're No Longer Supposed To Serve The Imaginations Of Men Who Have Dominated Us. We Are To Give Up Ourselves Instead To Those Whose Suffering Is Greater Than Our Own. Looking Down Is Just As Distorting As Looking Up And As Dangerous In Perpetuating Hierarchies.

My Private Measure Of Success Is Daily. If This Were To Be The Last Day Of My Life Would I Be Content With It? To Live In A Harmonious Balance Of Commitments And Pleasures Is What I Strive For.

The Real Power Of Books Is Their Deep Companionability. We Learn From Them As We Learn From The Deep Companionability Of Love To Know Our Own Hearts And Minds Better.

Morality For The Novelist Is Expressed Not So Much In The Choice Of Subject Matter As In The Plot Of The Narrative, Which Is Perhaps Why In Our Morally Bewildered Time Novelists Have Often Been Timid About Plot.

I Had Always Said To Myself That Forty Was The Cut Off Point Of My Apprenticeship Which May For Some People Sound Like A Very Long One, But The Novel As Art Is A Middle-aged Art.