I hope we're all ready to leave the phenomenal world, and enter into the sublime?

They were playing old Bob Dylan, more than perfect for narrow Village streets close to Christmas and the snow whirling down in big feathery flakes, the kind of winter where you want to be walking down a city street with your arm around a girl like on the old record cover.

Even if you need, and want, a second opinion, it can be dangerous to have people telling you what they think you ought to add, or cut, before you've even finished telling your story. One loses heart; one loses energy and interest. Or at least I do.

So I'm not a Southern writer in the commonly held sense of the term, like Faulkner or Eudora Welty, who took the South for their entire literary environment and subject matter.

Always remember, the person we’re really working for is the person who’s restoring the piece a hundred years from now. He’s the one we want to impress.

There's nothing like having a sympathetic reader who asks the right questions, who understands what you're trying to achieve and only wants to make it better.

Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale.