If We Don't Bear Witness As Citizens,

It's Not The Length But The Quality Of Life That Matters To Me. It Has Always Been Important To Me To Write One Sentence At A Time, To Live Every Day As If It Were My Last And Judge It In Those Terms, Often Badly, Not Because It Lacked Grand Gesture Or Grand Passion But Because It Failed In The Daily Virtues Of Self-discipline, Kindness, And Laughter. It Is Love, Very Ordinary, Human Love, And Not Fear, Which Is The Good Teacher And The Wisest Judge.

Coming Out, All The Way Out, Is Offered More And More As The Political Solution To Our Oppression. The Argument Goes That, If People Could See Just How Many Of Us There Are, Some In Very Important Places, The Negative Stereotype Would Vanish Overnight. ...it Is Far More Realistic To Suppose That, If The Tenth Of The Population That Is Gay Became Visible Tomorrow, The Panic Of The Majority Of People Would Inspire Repressive Legislation Of A Sort That Would Shock Even The Pessimists Among Us.

I Believe Only In Art And Failure.

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.

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.