how weird it is to make a decision to be a writer, to rather than go out into the world and live your life and experience in an outward sort of way, you turn inward. you go down to my literally come into your basement come into your writing study, and everything that they can you put yourself in there and check yourself away from it all. but i have no regrets about that. really? no, i think that i was made to do this, and i need to do it. and i don't feel that it's going inward, you see? this is something i would dispute completely. the first time i had an impulse to write anything, i was nine years old. it was the first very beautiful day of spring, it was a saturday, there was no school. i remember getting up and feeling free and happy, and i left the house early in the morning and i took a walk to the neighbourhood, i went to a little park where, not far from the house, and the first birds were hopping around, the first robins of spring. i felt ecstatically alive, and