The craftless anarchy of the Beat poets on the one hand, and the extreme control of Henry James on the other, suggest that for most human beings, just as both freedom and discipline are necessary in life, serendipity and design must coexist in a work to make it readable.

We must carefully consider card security solutions, such as adding photographs or machine-readable electronic strips, so to prevent further breaches of individual privacy that could result from changes to the design of Social Security Cards.

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

Writing doesn't come real easy to me. I couldn't write a novel in a year. It wouldn't be readable. I don't let an editor even look at it until the second year because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.

It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

We must carefully consider card security solutions such as adding photographs or machine-readable electronic strips so to prevent further breaches of individual privacy that could result from changes to the design of Social Security Cards.