Hope ... Is Not A Feeling; It

...i Just Gave Up Trying To Be A Christian... Let's Face It, I Ain't Got The Knack For Holiness. Besides, I Didn't Have The Slightest Little Desire To Join The Likes Of Reverend Pelham At The Dinner Table For Fourteen Minutes, Much Less At The Banquet Table Of Heaven Eternally. Eternity Is A Mighty Long Time To Be Stuck With People Who Judge Every Word You Say And Think And Condemn Most Of What You Do. It Struck Me As Pretty Miserable Company. And If Reverend Pelham Was The Kind Of Company God Preferred To Keep, Well, I Just Hoped They'd Be Happy Together.

We Are Trying To Communicate That Which Lies In Our Deepest Heart, Which Has No Words, Which Can Only Be Hinted At Through The Means Of A Story. And Somehow, Miraculously, A Story That Comes From Deep In My Heart Calls From A Reader That Which Is Deepest In His Or Her Heart, And Together From Our Secret Hidden Selves We Create A Story That Neither Of Us Could Have Told Alone.

The Thing I Have Learned Through The Years Is That One Idea 'doth' Not A Novel Make. A Novel Must Be Several Seemingly Unrelated Ideas That Somehow Magically Come Together To Create The Fabric Of The Story.

A Novel Is Not Born Of A Single Idea. The Stories I've Tried To Write From One Idea, No Matter How Terrific An Idea, Have Sputtered Out And Died By Chapter Three. For Me, Novels Have Invariably Come From A Complex Of Ideas That In The Beginning Seemed To Bear No Relation To Each Other, But In The Unconscious Began Mysteriously To Merge And Grow. Ideas For A Novel Are Like The Strong Guy Lines Of A Spider Web. Without Them The Silken Web Cannot Be Spun.

I'm Sure My First Nine Years Have Had A Powerful Influence On The Kind Of Books I Write.