High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate your thoughts. The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.

I felt I was beating a rainbow to death

If you don't have dreams, how do you maneuver reality? Where do you get the ideas to change reality if not from dreams?

There is nothing more satisfying than having a sentence fall into place in a way you feel is right, and then adding another one and then another one. It's extraordinarily satisfying.

It's hard to visualize James Bond without seeing one of the actors who played him. And it's hard to visualize Harry Potter without seeing Daniel Radcliffe. A movie is so visually powerful, so overwhelming, that it tends to crowd out how you might have imagined things.

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.