The novelist works neither to correct nor to condone, not at all to comfort, but to make what's told alive. - Eudora Welty

Since we must and do write each our own way, we may during actual writing get more lasting instruction not from another's work, whatever its blessings, however better it is than ours, but from our own poor scratched-over pages. For these we can hold up to life. That is, we are born with a mind and heart to hold each page up to, and to ask: is it valid?

Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience.

I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.