I Think I'm Less The Writer Than

The Novel Is Resilient, And So Are Novelists.

I Shall Strip Away Layer After Layer Of Grime -- The Toffee-colored Varnish And Caked Soot Left By A Lifetime Of Dissembling -- Until I Come To The Very Thing Itself And Know It For What It Is. My Soul. My Self.

What I Was Afraid Of Was My Own Grief, The Weight Of It, The Ineluctable Corrosive Force Of It, And The Stark Awareness I Had Of Being, For The First Time In My Life, Entirely Alone, A Crusoe Shipwrecked And Stranded In The Limitless Wastes Of A Boundless And Indifferent Ocean.

Poetry Is That Magic Which Consists In Awakening Sensations With The Help Of A Combination Of Sounds ... That Sorcery By Which Ideas Are Necessarily Communicated To Us, In A Definite Way, By Words Which Nevertheless Do Not Express Them.

All I Wanted Was To Be Left Alone. They Abhor A Vacuum, Other People. You Find A Quiet Corner Where You Can Hunker Down In Peace, And The Next Minute There They Are, Crowding Around You In Their Party Hats, Tooting Their Paper Whistles In Your Face And Insisting You Get Up And Join In The Knees-up.