First Rule Of Writing: When

It Seems To Me,' Said Magid Finally, As The Moon Became Clearer Than The Sun, 'that You Have Tried To Love A Man As If He Were An Island And You Were Shipwrecked And You Could Mark The Land With An X. It Seems To Me It Is Too Late In The Day For All That.' Then He Gave Her A Kiss On The Forehead That Felt Like A Baptism And She Wept Like A Baby.

He Was Bookish, She Was Not; He Was Theoretical, She Political. She Called A Rose A Rose. He Called It An Accumulation Of Cultural And Biological Constructions Circulating Around The Mutually Attracting Binary Poles Of Nature/artifice.

It's Difficult To Tell The Truth About How A Book Begins. The Truth, As Far As It Can Be Presented To Other People, Is Either Wholly Banal Or Too Intimate.

We Cannot Be All The Writers All The Time. We Can Only Be Who We Are. Which Leads Me To My Second Point: Writers Do Not Write What They Want, They Write What They Can.

One Thing You Learn About The Novel As A Form Is That It's Always Smarter Than You Are.