I Don't Believe In God,

I'm Interested In Such Things As The Difference Between How We Perceive The World And What The World Turns Out To Be. The Difference Is Between The Stories We Tell Others And The Stories We Tell Ourselves. There Is A Wonderful Russian Saying, Which I Use As The Epigraph Of One Of My Novels, Which Goes, He Lies Like An Eyewitness. Which Is Very Sly, Clever And True.

Books Say: She Did This Because. Life Says: She Did This. Books Are Where Things Are Explained To You; Life Is Where Things Aren't. I'm Not Surprised Some People Prefer Books.

The Imagination Doesn't Crop Annually Like A Reliable Fruit Tree. The Writer Has To Gather Whatever's There: Sometimes Too Much, Sometimes Too Little, Sometimes Nothing At All. And In The Years Of Glut There Is Always A Slatted Wooden Tray In Some Cool, Dark Attic, Which The Writer Nervously Visits From Time To Time; And Yes, Oh Dear, While He's Been Hard At Work Downstairs, Up In The Attic There Are Puckering Skins, Warning Spots, A Sudden Brown Collapse And The Sprouting Of Snowflakes. What Can He Do About It?

All Bad Things Are Exaggerated In The Middle Of The Night. When You Lie Awake, You Only Think Of Bad Things.

Most Of Us Remember Adolescence As A Kind Of Double Negative: No Longer Allowed To Be Children, We Are Not Yet Capable Of Being Adults.