A plot begins when somebody has something to hide.
Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.
What is money, after all? Almost nothing, when one has a sufficiency of it.
For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.
And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference.
The effect of prizes on one's career - if that is what to call it - is considerable, since they give one more clout with publishers and more notoriety among journalists. The effect on one's writing, however, is nil - otherwise, one would be in deep trouble.