In Praise of Friendship

and despair for anything else

Let me begin by thanking you. Writers without readers are a lot like a zoo without any patrons. The cool animals are there and they make the same sounds, stand glamorous on their little hills, preening and flaunting fancy manes or feathers, occasionally bickering and swiping each others’ apple slices, but without patrons, all this extraordinary creative activity is just a tragic collection of trapped wild things — it is only when the zoo has visitors that the whole display has any meaning.