Do What I Will Never Do.

Gogol Is Unaccustomed To This Sort Of Talk At Mealtimes, To The Indulgent Ritual Of The Lingering Meal, And The Pleasant Aftermath Of Bottles And Crumbs And Empty Glasses That Clutter The Table.

It Was Not In My Nature To Be An Assertive Person. I Was Used To Looking To Others For Guidance, For Influence, Sometimes For The Most Basic Cues Of Life. And Yet Writing Stories Is One Of The Most Assertive Things A Person Can Do. Fiction Is An Act Of Willfulness, A Deliberate Effort To Reconceive, To Rearrange, To Reconstitute Nothing Short Of Reality Itself. Even Among The Most Reluctant And Doubtful Of Writers, This Willfulness Must Emerge. Being A Writer Means Taking The Leap From Listening To Saying, "listen To Me."

Still, There Are Times I Am Bewildered By Each Mile I Have Traveled, Each Meal I Have Eaten, Each Person I Have Known, Each Room In Which I Have Slept. As Ordinary As It All Appears, There Are Times When It Is Beyond My Imagination.

War Will Bring The Revolution; Revolution Will Stop The War.

And Yet She Could Not Forgive Herself. Even As An Adult, She Wished Only That She Could Go Back And Change Things: The Ungainly Things She’d Worn, The Insecurity She’d Felt, All The Innocent Mistakes She Made.