My Father Died In My Arms. That's

I Don't Have A Very Logical And Orderly Mind.

I Have A Theory... That Someplace At The Heart Of Most Compelling Stories Is Something That Doesn't Make Sense.

Something Will Be There When The Flood Recedes. We Know That. It Will Be Those People Now Standing In The Water, And On Those Rooftops - Many Black, Many Poor. Homeless. Overlooked. And It Will Be New Orleans - Though Its Memory May Be Shortened, Its Self-gaze And Eccentricity Scoured Out So That What's Left Is A City More Like Other Cities, Less Insular, Less Self-regarding, But Possibly More Self-knowing After Today. A City On Firmer Ground.

A Reader Is Entitled To Believe What He Or She Believes Is Consonant With The Facts Of The Book. It Is Not Unusual That Readers Take Away Something That Is Spiritually At Variance From What I Myself Experienced. That's Not To Say Readers Make Up The Book They Want. We All Have To Agree On The Facts. But Readers Bring Their Histories And All Sets Of Longings. A Book Will Pluck The Strings Of Those Longings Differently Among Different Readers.

I Started Reading Literature At 17 Or 18, And I Felt This Extra Beat To Life.