Rebels defy the rules of society, risking everything to retain their humanity. If the world Atwood depicts is chilling, if 'God is losing,' the only hope for optimism is a vision that includes the inevitability of human struggle against the prevailing order.

Jack Kerouac did what he most wanted to do. He wrote great prose. He became the writer he wanted to be.

A lot of artists don't survive, do they? You work very hard and finally you get what you want and it destroys you.

If you want to do creative work, there are tremendous sacrifices involved, and tremendous financial sacrifices too. It requires dedication and solitude.

What if you lived your entire life completely without urgency? You went to classes, you ate your meals, on Saturday nights a boy you didn't love took you to the movies; now and then you actually had a conversation with someone. The rest of the time -the hours that weren't accounted for-you spent waiting for something to happen to you; when you were particularly desperate, you went out looking for it.

Legend adheres to artists whose deaths seem the corollaries of their works.

We tend to make up the people we fall in love with