The Writer’s Life Is A

There's A Hazardous Sadness To The First Sounds Of Someone Else's Work In The Morning; It's As If Stillness Experiences Pain In Being Broken.

The More You Pursue Distractions, The Less Effective Any Particular Distraction Is, And So I'd Had To Up Various Dosages, Until, Before I Knew It, I Was Checking My E-mail Every Ten Minutes, And My Plugs Of Tobacco Were Getting Ever Larger, And My Two Drinks A Night Had Worsened To Four, And I'd Achieved Such Deep Mastery Of Computer Solitaire That My Goal Was No Longer To Win A Game But To Win Two Or More Games In A Row--a Kind Of Meta-solitaire Whose Fascination Consisted Not In Playing The Cards But In Surfing The Streaks Of Wins And Losses.

Nell Zink Is A Writer Of Extraordinary Talent And Range. Her Work Insistently Raises The Possibility That The World Is Larger And Stranger Than The World You Think You Know.

This Wasn't The Person He'd Thought He Was, Or Would Have Chosen To Be If He'd Been Free To Choose, But There Was Something Comforting And Liberating About Being An Actual Definite Someone, Rather Than A Collection Of Contradictory Potential Someones.

I Was A Late Child From My Parents, So I Grew Up Surrounded By People A Lot Older Than Me. I Think Even When I Was 21, I Felt Like I Was A 70-year-old Man.