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I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

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Certain places seem to exist mainly because someone has written about them.

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Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?

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Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel

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I tell you this true story just to prove that I can. That my frailty has not yet reached a point at which I can no longer tell a true story.

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My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to...more

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The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily...more