The Most Purely Autobiographical ­fiction Requires Pure

Depression Presents Itself As A Realism Regarding The Rottenness Of The World In General And The Rottenness Of Your Life In Particular. But The Realism Is Merely A Mask For Depression's Actual Essence, Which Is An Overwhelming Estrangement From Humanity. The More Persuaded You Are Of Your Unique Access To The Rottenness, The More Afraid You Become Of Engaging With The World; And The Less You Engage With The World, The More Perfidiously Happy-faced The Rest Of Humanity Seems For Continuing To Engage With It.

I Think The Mission For The Writer Is To Tell Stories In A Compelling Way About The Stuff That Cannot Be Talked About, That Cannot Be Gotten At With Shallow Media.

Fiction, I Believed, Was The Transmutation Of Experiential Dross Into Linguistic Gold. Fiction Meant Taking Up Whatever The World Had Abandoned By The Road And Making Something Beautiful Out Of It.

He Watched A Catbird Hopping Around In An Azalea That Was Readying Itself To Bloom; He Envied The Bird For Knowing Nothing Of What He Knew; He Would Have Swapped Souls With It In A Heartbeat. And Then To Take Wing, To Know The Air's Buoyancy Even For An Hour: The Trad Was A No-brainer, And The Catbird, With Its Lively Indifference To Him, Its Sureness Of Physical Selfhood, Seemed Well Aware Of How Preferable It Was To Be The Bird.

Birds Were Like Dinosaurs' Better Selves. They Had Short Lives And Long Summers. We All Should Be So Lucky As To Leave Behind Such Heirs.