I Don't Think The Creative

Fiction Is About Intimacy With Characters, Events, Places.

One Of The Biggest Changes That Ever Occurred In My Life Was Going From The Isolation Of Working Part-time As A House Painter In Henderson County, To Cornell, Where Everybody Was A Literary Person.

I Tell Students They Will Know They Are Getting Somewhere When A Scene Is So Painful They Can Just Barely Bring Themselves To Write About It. A Writer Has To Draw Blood.

The Decision To Write In Prose Instead Of Poetry Is Made More By The Readers Than By Writers. Almost No One Is Interested In Reading Narrative In Verse.

It Was Less A Literary Thing Than A Linguistic, Philosophical Preoccupation... Discovering How Far You Can Go With Language To Create Immediate, Elementary Experience.