In My Experience One Thing

The Writer, Like A Swimmer Caught By An Undertow, Is Borne In An Unexpected Direction. He Is Carried To A Subject Which Has Awaited Him--a Subject Sometimes No Part Of His Conscious Plan. Reality, The Reality Of Sensation, Has Accumulated Where It Was Least Sought. To Write Is To Be Captured--captured By Some Experience To Which One May Have Given Hardly A Thought.

Yes, Writing A Novel, My Boy, Is Like Driving Pigs To Market - You Have One Of Them Making A Bolt Down The Wrong Lane; Another Won't Get Over The Right Stile.

When You Love Someone All Your Saved Up Wishes Start Coming Out.

Wariness Had Driven Away Poetry; From Hesitating To Feel Came The Moment When You No Longer Could.

Dialogue Must Appear Realistic Without Being So. Actual Realism-the Lifting, As It Were, Of Passages From A Stenographer's Take-down Of A 'real Life' Conversation-would Be Disruptive. Of What? Of The Illusion Of The Novel. In 'real Life' Everything Is Diluted; In The Novel Everything Is Condensed.