One has an impulse to bring glad tidings to someone. My sense of literature is a sense of giving, not a diminishment. I know of almost no pleasure greater than having a piece of fiction draw together disparate incidents so that they relate to one another and confirms that feeling that life itself is is a creative process.

Some years ago I said that I felt like a runner, concerned with my wind, my strength and the surrounding scenery, but concerned not at all with where I had been . . . it is still what I feel.