Outside the leaves on the trees constricted slightly; they were the deep done green of the beginning of autumn. It was a Sunday in September. There would only be four. The clouds were high and the swallows would be here for another month or so before they left for the south before they returned again next summer.

We all know our dates of birth but . . . every year there is another date that we pass over without knowing what it is but it is just as important it is the other date the death date.

Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen.

I have thought for a long time that the way my clothes hang on me is more important than me inside them.

It is important to know the stories and histories of things, even if all we know is that we don't know.

I had a job, I got ill, I left the job to get better, and while I was getting better, I wrote some stories. I sent them to some publishers and the fifth one who replied said they'd take them. Then they went bankrupt. Then that bankrupt publisher got bought by a bigger firm. Story: in the end is the beginning, and in the beginning is the end.

All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.