You Can't Get Rid Of

Once A Little Boy Sent Me A Charming Card With A Little Drawing On It. I Loved It. I Answer All My Children’s Letters — Sometimes Very Hastily — But This One I Lingered Over. I Sent Him A Card And I Drew A Picture Of A Wild Thing On It. I Wrote, “dear Jim: I Loved Your Card.” Then I Got A Letter Back From His Mother And She Said, “jim Loved Your Card So Much He Ate It.” That To Me Was One Of The Highest Compliments I’ve Ever Received. He Didn’t Care That It Was An Original Maurice Sendak Drawing Or Anything. He Saw It, He Loved It, He Ate It.

Emeralds,' Said The Rabbit. 'emeralds Make A Lovely Gift.

Art Has Always Been My Salvation. And My Gods Are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart. I Believe In Them With All My Heart. And When Mozart Is Playing In My Room, I Am In Conjunction With Something I Can’t Explain — I Don’t Need To. I Know That If There’s A Purpose For Life, It Was For Me To Hear Mozart. Or If I Walk In The Woods And I See An Animal, The Purpose Of My Life Was To See That Animal. I Can Recollect It, I Can Notice It. I’m Here To Take Note Of. And That Is Beyond My Ego, Beyond Anything That Belongs To Me, An Observer, An Observer.

Children Do Live In Fantasy And Reality; They Move Back And Forth Very Easily In A Way We No Longer Remember How To Do.

It Was A Very Difficult Time. I Was Working On [umble-ardy] When My Partner And Friend Was Dying Of Cancer. We Set Up A Room In The House To Be Like A Hospital Room. Eugene Died, And Then I Had Bypass Surgery. I Was Doing The Book To Stay Sane While All This Was Going On.