With Children The Clock Is Reset. We

He Tries To Peel The Image From The Sticky Yellow Backing, To Show Her The Next Time He Sees Her, But It Clings Stubbornly, Refusing To Detach Cleanly From The Past.

She Has The Gift Of Accepting Her Life.

Fiction Is The Only Way I Know A Human Being Can Inhabit The Mind Of Another Human Being.

It Was Not In My Nature To Be An Assertive Person. I Was Used To Looking To Others For Guidance, For Influence, Sometimes For The Most Basic Cues Of Life. And Yet Writing Stories Is One Of The Most Assertive Things A Person Can Do. Fiction Is An Act Of Willfulness, A Deliberate Effort To Reconceive, To Rearrange, To Reconstitute Nothing Short Of Reality Itself. Even Among The Most Reluctant And Doubtful Of Writers, This Willfulness Must Emerge. Being A Writer Means Taking The Leap From Listening To Saying, "listen To Me."

In Fiction, Plenty Do The Job Of Conveying Information, Rousing Suspense, Painting Characters, Enabling Them To Speak. But Only Certain Sentences Breathe And Shift About, Like Live Matter In Soil.