writing is a liar's business and i am working very hard so that one one day i will stop lying and then able to tell the truth. this is something very difficult to do while writing, to tell the truth. but i am practicing truth-speaking by way of lie-telling, at least honest lie-telling or rather earnest lie-telling. when the time comes for me to speak some truth i will not only speak this truth with conviction and zeal, i will have cultivated the face, rhetoric, and poise of an honest person, thus making me a better liar. every day i am becoming a better and better liar and it is for the best of humanity and the uplifting of my fellow man.

they say satan is the father of lies but really maybe he is the father of romance. the fall of man bore hatred, hunger, and kathleen woodiwiss. in the garden, planted near the fabled fruit of eternity, was the bushel of embellishment and what a beautiful little shrub it must have bee with the roots of narnia and middle earth beneath it. and me and j.k. rowlin will make it to second base once we're both dead. she'll suddenly conjure issues with her childhold involving an old flame which she feels she must haunt now and i, once again, will be left with my thumb in my mouth writing little stories on napkins and leaving them for girls to find so that one day they will tell warmly the story of how we met and how i never told a lie once, that even i, a writer, never told a ghostly lie. so that is why every day i am practicing for that one moment where i tell the truth and not tell a lie, even an honest one.