Writing is an odd enterprise. Why take the fragments of lived experience and rearrange them in some new pattern? Why tell stories at all? For a while I supposed the urge came from a need to tidy up the mess of life, to impose meaning on the meaningless. More recently, I have come to see that I am in the grip of a greater drive, which I name with some hesitation, because it seems too grand. I am trying, clumsily, to reach the truth of my life. This is hard. Like everyone else, I tell lies all the time, most of all to myself. I lie about who I am and what I want and how much I hurt. I lie to survive. I tell a story of myself that I hope will make others love and admire me. But more and more, I write to strip away these lies, and say Look, this is how it really is. What then? I look. I recognize the truth. That's all. No moral. No lesson. No consolation. And yet it's profoundly satisfying. This is the experience the great writers give me. Its what I'm trying to do in my own work.
- William Nicholson
Introduction to The Retreat from Moscow
New York 2004
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