I tell my students, who believe passionately in explaining the work they’re sharing, You know, when you’re dead, you can’t go around explaining this thing — it has to be right there on the page.
“The mark had been made for me and the door flung open; the passage, gathering up all the elements of the troubled time, had been itself quite a scene, quite enough of one, and I had become aware with it of a rich accession of possibilities.”