I am concentrating docilely on the question why U.S. restrooms always appear to us as infirmaries for public distress, the place to reagain control.

...we live in an era of terrible preoccupation with presentation and interpretation, one in which relations between who someone is and what he believes and how he "expresses himself" have been thrown into big time flux.

Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or present yourself in a way you figure you will be maximally likable.

To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I'm scared about how sappy this'll look in print, saying this.

It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.

Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.