# Leben

"When I came home, I was asked to put my pictures in a photo exhibit at the Cinematography College ... My pictures won first prize. I began to ask myself what I was doing, and why. A few months after the exhibit, I dropped out of college, left my wife and began to write this book."

"To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain with the author as a guide-- a guide one might not always agree with or trust, but who can at least be counted on to take one somewhere."

"I love New York. You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, hail a taxi, head down Fifth Avenue with a giant hellhound loping along behind you, and nobody even looks at you funny.Of course, the Mist helped. People probably couldn't see Mrs. O'Leary, or maybe they thought she was a large,loud,very friendly truck."

"The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it or to escape what is bad in it but we will escape it only by adding something better to it."

"He held up a finger and went to the hallway, where he tripped over Blotchy, and then over the two monster cats madly pursuing Blotchy. Swearing, he leaned over the landing and called to the guard that unless the kingdom fell to war or his daughter was dying, he better not be interrupted until further notice."