Then It Is Dark; It

Fiction Is Experimentation; When It Ceases To Be That, It Ceases To Be Fiction.

Fiction Must Compete With First-rate Reporting. If You Cannot Write A Story That Is Equal To A Factual Account Of Battle In The Streets Or Demonstrations, Then You Can't Write A Story.

The Novel Remains For Me One Of The Few Forms Where We Can Record Man's Complexity And The Strength And Decency Of His Longings. Where We Can Describe, Step By Step, Minute By Minute, Our Not Altogether Unpleasant Struggle To Put Ourselves Into A Viable And Devout Relationship To Our Beloved And Mistaken World.

Avoid Kneeling In Unheated Stone Churches. Ecclesiastical Dampness Causes Prematurely Grey Hair.

To Disguise Nothing, To Conceal Nothing, To Write About Those Things That Are Closest To Our Pain, Our Happiness; To Write About Our Sexual Clumsiness, The Agonies Of Tantalus, The Depth Of Our Discouragement-what We Glimpse In Our Dreams-our Despair. To Write About The Foolish Agonies Of Anxiety, The Refreshment Of Our Strength When These Are Ended; To Write About Our Painful Search For Self, Jeopardized By A Stranger In The Post Office, A Half-seen Face In A Train Window, To Write About The Continents And Populations Of Our Dreams, About Love And Death, Good And Evil, The End Of The World.