“Author's NoteThis is not so much an author's note as an author's reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up.Neither novels or their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”

“Neither novels or their readers benefit from any attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.”

“I want you to feel empowered to explore those questions without worrying that there is some secret answer somewhere resting with the author. The author does not have the answer. The author, despite what our culture tells us, is not the powerful one. The reader is the powerful one. The author scratches some symbols onto a page. The reader makes it live.”

“Authors do not own books, readers do”

“And okay, fair enough, but there is this unwritten contract between author and reader and I think not ending your book kind of violates that contract.”

“But to be perfectly frank, this childish idea that the author of a novel has some special insight into the characters in the novel...it's ridiculous. That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended.”

“Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the author intended a symbol to be there, because the job of reading is not to understand the authors intend. The job of reading is to see into other people as we see ourselves.”