The Woman in the Library

Still, there might be something fitting about a friendship based on a common love of words being founded on an exchange of the same.

I am a bricklayer without drawings, laying words in sentences, sentences into paragraphs, allowing my walls to twist and turn on whim...no framework...just bricks interlocked...no idea what I'm building or if it will stand...no symmetry, no plan, just the chaotic unplotted bustle of human life.

I'm touched by the way she asks. Like reading the work of a writer is a privilege and not the purpose for which we write.

I ask him about his novel. I fancy that Leo writes historical fiction, and for some reason I'm convinced his era is the Roman Empire. I have no reason to suppose this...it's just a fancy. "Romance," he says. "I write romance." My surprise clearly needs no words because he continues to explain. "My agent will tell you it's a story about passionate friendships and reluctant relationships in modern America, but really it's a romance." "Oh...set today?" I'm still thinking gladiators. "Modern America, remember." "Have you...have you always written romance?" "Yes, and what's more, so have you. The mystery writers, the historical novelists, the political thriller writers, the science fiction writers...everybody but the people who write instruction manuals is writing romance. We dress our stories up with murders, and discussions about morality and society, but really we just care about relationships." "You can't be serious. You're saying Stephen King writes romances?" "Yes, ma'am!" Leo sits back in the sofa. "The killer clown is entertaining and all that, but what we're really interested in is whether the fat kid gets the pretty girl.

The story of her life etched on her skin… She’s like a walking book. Patterns and portraits and words. Mantras of love and power. I wonder how much of it is fiction.

Whit’s biggest problem is how to actually avoid graduating from Harvard Law, and Marigold thinks expensive tattoos make her street.

Just Gatsby,” he says. “It reminds me that flawed people can create perfect works of literature.” “And why do you need to be reminded of that?

Leo shakes his head. “You Aussies have a dark side.” “Nonsense. We’re friendly alcoholics who like to barbeque and swear.

I rarely reread books. There are too many wonderful books without retreading old ground.

So now I’m alone with a murderer. But then, it’s not the first time.

And so we go to the Map Room to found a friendship, and I have my first coffee with a killer.

Maybe I should stop looking at the ceiling and write something.

Writing in the Boston Public Library had been a mistake. It was too magnificent. One could spend hours just staring at the ceiling in the Reading Room.

I am vaguely aware that Cain has not returned my call, but maybe it's absurd to expect a call to thank me for calling to thank him. Where would it end?

I’ve been starving for at least three hours, afraid to ask the muse for time off to buy food. She’s fickle and easily offended, likely to sulk if I don’t give her my complete attention when she’s gracing me with her presence. Perhaps that’s why writers starve in garrets—because the literary muse is a sadistic fascist.

the excited crush of friendship’s beginning, untarnished by the annoyances, disappointments, and minor betrayals which come with the passing of time.

bakery in Back Bay. Divine! Honest, their products make you believe in God and willing to forsake him at the same time.

the towel, rolls onto his side, and drags himself up into a sitting position against the wall. He catches his breath, and then, “I had no idea till just now, you fucking moron. I thought you were too dumb to do anything more complicated than eat donuts!

One of the benefits of vegetarian meals is that they rarely take long to prepare and, motivated by the fact that this will be the first meal of the day we actually eat, I’m ready to serve large bowls of pasta and sauce very quickly.

they felt I was working in the wrong genre…which I suppose is an indirect way of saying they want my protagonist to be a vampire and the climax to involve an alien invasion…and not the kind with which our President seems preoccupied!

I feel loss and lost, a hole in the place of what I believed, what I should believe.

know you’re not white,

That’s not less offensive because it’s a Hamilton quote,” I say reprovingly.

It’s also much less common in the U.S. for women to be as heavily inked as women in Australia.

While your summer lingers, so too does the glacial period which is passing itself off as winter here. I know you are imagining picture postcards of children playing in the snow, but really, after the first day snow is just work. It’s shovelling and scraping, walking carefully, the tedium of layering on and off each time you go in or out of a building. It takes hours out of everyone’s day. And while fresh snowfall can be pretty, the slushy muddy mush left after a day of two is anything but! I really miss the color green

I am so far over the moon I can see Pluto!

As for your enquiries about how my own book is coming: Well, I spent Friday at the library. I wrote a thousand words and deleted fifteen hundred. Regardless, the Boston Public Library is a nice spot in which to be stood up by the muse.