"It's why they appeal to me. Bizarre, but it's the linear structure in most fiction that's really strange. Nothing has a clear beginning, middle and end. I like her stylistic tangle; it's much more accurate to what people are really like." Referring, of course, to their minds, thoughts and emotions.

He looks thoughtful for a moment, then recites, "The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the titanic you go down. That's the size of it, the immensity of it. It's not proper, it's not clean, it's not containable." It applies to life as much as it applies to love. Looking more clearly at Irene, he says, "That's much more truthful than the hero and heroine riding off into the sunset."