"without the resources of dreams and literature-and psychoanalysis for the lucky few-the consequences are surely dire"

"I was once asked by Adam Phillips if I did a lot of readings and I answered that yes, I did, but that these appearances were difficult and I suffered shame. So he said 'then why do you do them?' And I answered, 'I guess this must be perverse.' He said, 'I think you want to make something out of your shame.' I still find this comment comforting and illuminating. And then, not much later, at a Q and A at Syracuse University, a student asked me a related question: 'aren't you embarrassed to to walk around if you know that there are people looking at you and thinking about what you've written?' I answered him something like this: 'well, you know this is fiction! And I can take the cover that this is fiction! But really, I can take no cover.' I said that literature ought not to be a haven for tea time conversation, for polite speech-that most of us are obliterated by all of our opportunities for polite speech, that without the resources of dreams and literature-and psychoanalysis for the lucky few-the consequences are surely dire. Well I said something like that"

-Diane Williams, in the Believer