When You Are Writing Fiction Your Task

How Rarely Do Our Emotions Meet The Object They Seem To Deserve? How Hopelessly We Signal; How Dark The Sky; How Big The Waves. We Are All Lost At Sea, Washed Between Hope And Despair, Hailing Something That May Never Come To Rescue Us.

Life Is Like Invading Russia. A Blitz Start, Massed Shakos, Plumes Dancing Like A Flustered Henhouse; A Period Of Svelte Progress Recorded In Ebullient Despatches As The Enemy Falls Back; Then The Beginning Of A Long, Morale-sapping Trudge With Rations Getting Shorter And The First Snowflakes Upon Your Face. The Enemy Burns Moscow And You Yield To General January, Whose Fingernails Are Very Icicles. Bitter Retreat. Harrying Cossacks. Eventually You Fall Beneath A Boy-gunner's Grapeshot While Crossing Some Polish River Not Even Marked On Your General's Map.

Do Not Imagine That Art Is Something Which Is Designed To Give Gentle Uplift And Self-confidence . Art Is Not A Brassiere. At Least, Not In The English Sense. But Do Not Forget That Brassiere Is The French Word For Life-jacket.

When We're Young, Everyone Over The Age Of Thirty Looks Middle-aged, Everyone Over Fifty Antique. And Time, As It Goes By, Confirms That We Weren't That Wrong. Those Little Age Differentials, So Crucial And So Gross When We Are Young Erode. We End Up All Belonging To The Same Category, That Of The Non-young. I've Never Much Minded This Myself.

If The Writer Were More Like A Reader, He’d Be A Reader, Not A Writer. It’s As Uncomplicated As That.