I believe in guilt. There's not enough guilt around these days for my taste.

Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve--hopeless ly he writes in the hope that he might serve--not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace that knows us.

But who knows what good might come from the least of us? From the bones of old horses is made the most beautiful Prussian Blue.

I believe in guilt. There's not enough guilt around these days for my taste.

Writers when they're writing live in a spooky, clamorous silence, a state somewhat like the advanced stages of prayer but without prayer's calming benefits.

You don't believe in Nature anymore. It's too isolated from you. You've abstracted it. It's so messy and damaged and sad. Your eyes glaze as you travel life's highway past all the crushed animals and the Big Gulp cups.

The story knows itself better than the writer does at some point, knows what's being said before the writer figures out how to say it.