Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.

Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that.

and did you get what you wanted from this life even so? i did.

I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.

My circumstances of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction necessitated the short story form.

She serves me a piece of it a few minutes out of the oven. A little steam rises from the slits on top. Sugar and spice - cinnamon - burned into the crust. But she's wearing these dark glasses in the kitchen at ten o'clock in the morning - everything nice - as she watches me break off a piece, bring it to my mouth, and blow on it. My daughter's kitchen, in winter. I fork the pie in and tell myself to stay out of it. She says she loves him. No way could it be worse.

But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window--maybe rearrange all the furniture.