“I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds.”

“Unfinished Poem
I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”

“As Malaparte saw it, Naples was a pagan city with an ancient sense of time. Christianity taught those who were converted to it to think of history as the unfolding of a single plot – a moral drama of sin and redemption. In the ancient world there was no such plot – only a multitude of stories that were forever being repeated. Inhabiting that ancient world, the Neapolitans did not expect any fundamental alteration in human affairs. Not having accepted the Christian story of redemption, they had not been seduced by the myth of progress. Never having believed civilization to be permanent, they were not surprised when it foundered.”

“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting ... Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.”

“You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can’t get me out of the story. I’m the plot, babe, and don’t ever forget it.”

“Pollock... I also feel
like an erupting volcano.”

“This murder of Hariri was deliberately planned and executed precisely to implicate Syria and to set in train the events which have unfolded.”

“Without conflict there is no plot, without hope there is no story”

“Walking on foreign ground
Like a shadow
Roaming in far off territory
Over your shoulder
Stories unfold
You're searching
For a sanctuary…”

“That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”