Now All The Mute Objects

It Was As If, Before She`d Met Him, Her Blood Had Circulated Grayly Around Her Body, And Now Ir Was All Oxygenated And Red. She Was Petrified Of Becoming The Half-alive Person She`d Been Before.

I Hadn't Gotten Old Enough Yet To Realize That Living Sends A Person Not Into The Future But Back Into The Past, To Childhood And Before Birth, Finally, To Commune With The Dead. You Get Older, You Puff On The Stairs, You Enter The Body Of Your Father. From There It's Only A Quick Jump To Your Grandparents, And Then Before You Know It You're Time Traveling. In This Life We Grow Backwards.

I Remember Liking To Write Stories Pretty Early On. In Fourth Or Fifth Grade, They Would Give Us The Beginning Of A Story, And We Were Supposed To Finish It. I Remember Liking That. But I Didn't Think About Deciding To Become A Writer Until High School At About The Age Of 16.

College Wasn't Like The Real World. In The Real World People Dropped Names Based On Their Renown. In College, People Dropped Names Based On Their Obscurity.

What Are You Doing Here, Honey? You're Not Even Old Enough To Know How Bad Life Gets." (...) "obviously, Doctor," She Said, "you've Never Been A Thirteen-year-old Girl.