Against the sustained tick of a watch, fiction takes the measure of a life, a season, a look exchanged, the turning point, desire as brief as a dream, the grief and terror that after childhood we cease to express.

All lives are interesting; no one life is more interesting than another. Its fascination depends on how much is revealed, and in what manner.

Like every other form of art, literature is no more and nothing less than a matter of life and death. The only question worth asking about a story-or a poem, or a piece of sculpture, or a new concert hall-is, "Is it dead or alive?"

A writer's life stands in relation to his work as a house does to a garden, related but distinct.