Man," He Said, "i'm Not Afraid Of

Like The Morning You Walked Out Of That Old House, When You Were Eighteen And I Was, Well, I Had Just Turned Nineteen, Hadn't I? I Was A Nineteen-year-old And I Was In Love With Louis And I Was In Love With You, And I Thought I Had Never Seen Anything So Beautiful As The Sight Of You Walking Out A Glass Door In The Early Morning, Still Sleepy, In Your Underwear. Isn't It Strange?

I Revise Constantly, As I Go Along And Then Again After I've Finished A First Draft. Few Of My Novels Contain A Single Sentence That Closely Resembles The Sentence I First Set Down. I Just Find That I Have To Keep Zapping And Zapping The English Language Until It Starts To Behave In Some Way That Vaguely Matches My Intentions.

Like My Hero Virginia Woolf, I Do Lack Confidence. I Always Find That The Novel I'm Finishing, Even If It's Turned Out Fairly Well, Is Not The Novel I Had In My Mind. I Think A Lot Of Writers Must Negotiate This, And If They Don't Admit It, They're Not Being Honest.

I Don't Know If I Can Face This. You Know. The Party And The Ceremony, And Then The Hour After That, And The Hour After That." "you Don't Have To Go To The Party. You Don't Have To Go To The Ceremony. You Don't Have To Do Anything At All." "but There Are Still The Hours, Aren't There? One And Then Another, And You Get Through That One And Then, My God, There's Another. I'm So Sick.

He Insists On A Version Of You That Is Funnier, Stranger, More Eccentric And Prfound Thatn You Suspect Yourself To Be--capable Of Doing More Good And More Harm In The World Than You've Ever Imagined--it Is All But Impossible Not To Believe, At Least In His Presence And A While After You've Left Him, That He Alone Sees Through Your Essence, Weighs Your True Qualities . . . And Appreciates You More Fully Than Anyone Else Ever Has.