To shy away from human extremes and human sensuality makes for bone-dry fiction. A world parched of our sexual releases and our tumultuous daily emotional lives is deeply impoverished. It is not lifelike, at least life as I remember living it.
I'm a great admirer of Primo Levi's work. It's always mind-boggling, the idea of how much pain people can endure and still come back from the edge with a sense of humor, with this tremendous animal desire we have to get on with life.
I don't think anybody who has any wisdom regrets a minute of their life, as long as it takes you to the next minute, when things get a little better, and even when it doesn't.
I was born in Rocky Mount, NC. The town of 24,000 proved a great place to spend the first 17 years of life. But, after that, onward, outward.