I'm A Private Person, A

When I Meet People I Try To Make A Joke Out Of My Occupation, Explaining That What I Do All Day Is Sit Alone In A Darkened Room, Flicking Through Some Pages, Jumping On A Treadmill Now And Then. I Keep My Serious Work As A Writer Private, But That Doesn't Mean It's Not Serious Work - Quite The Opposite.

At Least In My Case, A Very Simple, Regular, Happy Life Makes For Better Writing.

If You Look At Communal Experiments In General For Any Amount Of Time, You'll Find A Lot Of Horrors: Raped Children, Sexual Slavery, Eugenics Experiments, On And On.

In My Totally Unscientific Yet Enthusiastic Survey Of Communal Experiments Throughout American History, I've Discovered That The Thing Most Likely To Break Up Said Experiments Is: Sex, All That Murky, Dark, Dirty Gunk Simmering Beneath Human Relations.

Childhood Is Such A Delicate Tissue; What They Had Done This Morning Could Snag Somewhere In The Little Ones, Make A Dull, Small Pain That Will Circle Back Again And Again, And Hurt Them In Small Ways For The Rest Of Their Lives.