Status Updates From The Valley of Unknowing

“One thing I knew about the novelist’s task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death.”

“In the Workers’ and Peasants’ State, where the citizen’s duty is always to report, the risk of official displeasure is like a disease: it spreads on contact.”