Where do you get your ideas?' people are always asking authors they admire, which Ive always thought was another way of asking, 'How did you get my ideas, which I didnt know I had until you put words to them?' We are known, appreciated, even cherished by our favorite writers; every word of our favorite books seems to have been written for us. Within their sentences and paragraphs, those writers are forever available, forever patient, including us in their compassionate recognition of the impossible, exhausting complexity of being human (those many thousand selves), never ignoring us or abandoning us or finding us dull. Its you, they whisper, as we turn their pages, you are the one Ive been waiting to tell everything to.