We even talked like Hemingway characters, though in travesty, as if to deny our discipleship: That is your bed, and it is a good bed, and you must make it and you must make it well. Or: Today is the day of the meatloaf. The meatloaf is swell. It is swell but when it is gone the not-having meatloaf will be tragic and the meatloaf man will not come anymore.

Perhaps that is why the novel flourished in England. You had these communities that would stay put and people would see one another all the time and cause one another to change and have the opportunity to observe the changes over time.

To be a writer you need to see things as they are, and to see things as they are you need a certain basic innocence.

One of the things that draws writers to writing is that they can get things right that they got wrong in real life by writing about them.

Had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he'd led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity - its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering condemnation and violence against others and self.

A piece of writing is a dangerous thing," he said. "It can change your life.

Like so many writers I started writing stories because I didn't have much time for anything else.