Zadie Smith and E. M. Forester

All fiction is written by an immigrant seeking a new world or an exile fleeing the old one.

But if a writer only takes things from real life he or she will make the reader unhappy.

Why do some books make you want to read them, if not over and over, at least once, from beginning to end? And some you put down after you've read the first line?

Though you know X is a marvel you can't read more than a sentence of X's writing. Y is another matter, you can read Y for hours, whatever Y says is the truth. Y is so close to things, Y can sit beside the river and be in the river too.

Last evening beside the canal just outside Cody, Wyoming, I opened up one of the irrigation pumps. I'd been out walking and was thirsty.

I bent down, put my ear to the pipe so I could hear if any water was coming. Nothing came. I got my ear as close as I could, almost down into the pipe itself where there's nothing between the crust of the earth and what's beneath, where all sound is hollow but promising.

I pumped and pumped and pumped and still nothing came.

I walked on to the next pump, about a half
mile away, did the same thing, put the pump handle in my right hand and pumped away, put my ear to the spigot and listened. I could hear the water rushing up to get above the surface of the earth like it couldn't wait to get there.