How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the air, to be tossed about by the music. How does one say that I breathed, that I existed, in harmony with the ups and downs of those notes. What kind of notes both elevate and cast down, exalt and crush?

That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?

My alarm clock during my childhood was a pride of lions.

My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.

Life is an interpretation of a series of facts, and that interpretation is really what life is about. So the division between non-fiction and fiction has a certain logic, but it's a very limited one. And by and large, it isn't helpful.

Any writer will be happy and good only if they know what they're doing and why they're doing it.

Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they're all we have.