Art Is A Game Only If You

The Real Writer Is One Who Really Writes. Talent Is An Invention Like Phlogiston After The Fact Of Fire. Work Is Its Own Cure. You Have To Like It Better Than Being Loved.

A New Idea Is Rarely Born Like Venus Attended By Graces. More Commonly It's Modeled Of Baling Wire And Acne. More Commonly It Wheezes And Tips Over.

Listening Is Terribly Important If You Want To Understand Anything About People. You Listen To What They Say And How They Say It, What They Share And What They Are Reticent About, What They Tell Truthfully And What They Lie About, What They Hope For And What They Fear, What They Are Proud Of, What They Are Ashamed Of. If You Don't Pay Attention To Other People, How Can You Understand Their Choices Through Time And How Their Stories Come Out?

Our Wedding Plans Please Everybody As If We Were Fertilizing The Earth And Creating Social Luck.

Now That I Am In My Forties, She [my Mother] Tells Me I'm Beautiful; Now That I Am In My Forties, She Sends Me Presents And We Have The Long, Personal And Even Remarkably Honest Phone Calls I Always Wanted So Intensely I Forbade Myself To Imagine Them. How Strange. Perhaps Shaw Was Correct And If We Lived To Be Several Hundred Years Old, We Would Finally Work It All Out. I Am Deeply Grateful. With My Poems, I Finally Won Even My Mother. The Longest Wooing Of My Life.