No matter how many compromises were made along the way, no matter what happens in the future, a book is a thing to behold.

But I also believe there is enormous value in the piece of writing that goes no further than the one person for whom it was intended, that no combination of written words is more eloquent than those exchanged in letters between lovers or friends, or along the pale blue lines of private diaries, where people take communion with themselves.

When an editor works with an author, she cannot help seeing into the medicine cabinet of his soul. All the terrible emotions, the desire for vindications, the paranoia, and the projection are bottled in there, along with all the excesses of envy, desire for revenge, all the hypochondriacal responses, rituals, defenses, and the twin obsessions with sex and money. It other words, the stuff of great books.

Tomorrow, I am fifty-two years old. And I want to say unequivocally that I am very happy to be alive, that being alive is better than being dead. And if I have just one wish it is this: that you work with all your might and love with all your heart and never lose hope and never give up.

No matter how many compromises were made along the way, no matter what happens in the future, a book is a thing to behold.

The writer labors in isolation, yet all that intensive, lonely work is in the service of communicating, is an attempt to reach another person.

But editors are still the world's readers. And thus the eyes of the world.