The Midwest Is Such A Tabula Rasa.

I Write The Way You Might Arrange Flowers. Not Every Try Works, But Each One Launches Another. Every Constraint, Even Dullness, Frees Up A New Design.

I Don't Mind Arguing With Myself. It's When I Lose That It Bothers Me.

Only White Men Have The Luxury Of Ignoring Race.

Time Passes, As The Novelist Says. The Single Most Useful Trick Of Fiction For Our Repair And Refreshment: The Defeat Of Time. A Century Of Family Saga And A Ride Up An Escalator Can Take The Same Number Of Pages. Fiction Sets Any Conversion Rate, Then Changes It In A Syllable. The Narrator’s Mother Carries Her Child Up The Stairs And The Reader Follows, For Days. But World War I Passes In A Paragraph. I Needed 125 Pages To Get From Labor Day To Christmas Vacation. In Six More Words, Here’s Spring.

I'd Like, Each Time Out As A Writer, To Reinvent Who I Am And What I'm Doing. That's One Of The Great Pleasures And Rewards Of The Occupation.