Girlfriends, indeed: the anti-video game.

Reading gives one something to think about other than one's self.

[M]y first published book had just appeared in stores. The last year of my life-the year of finishing it, editing it, and seeing it through its various page-proof passes-ranks among the most unnerving of my young life. It has not felt good, or freeing. It has felt nerve-shreddingly disquieting. Publication simply allows one that much more to worry about. This cannot be said to aspiring writers often or sternly enough. Whatever they carry within themselves they believe publication cures will not, I can all but guarantee, be cured. You just wind up with new diseases.

We are no longer worried that children are missing school because of video games, though. We are worried that they are murdering their classmates because of video games.

Girlfriends, indeed: the anti-video game.

To create anything… is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic.

Charyn, like Nabokov, is that most fiendish sort of writer-so seductive as to beg imitation, so singular as to make imitation impossible.