Off-camera lives are unverifiable.

Not long ago, a novelist could believe he could have an effect on our consciousness of terror. Today, the men who shape and inflence human consciousness are the terrorists.

Naturally a direct comparison of terrorist and novelist is complete nonsense. But there was once a time when the novelist also had some influence on how his contemporaries thought, the way they saw the world, the way they lived.

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

There came a time in every prolonged effort when he had a moment of near panic, or 'terror in a lonely place', the original semantic content of the word. The lonely place was his own mind.

The world is shrinking into a kind of technological funnel. I think people are drawn into their technological devices, and this becomes a kind of subjective universe, into which much of the rest of the world simply does not enter.

How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?