Writers as Outsider

We are the tools and instruments of out talent. We are outsiders; we have no place in society because society is what we're watching, and dealing with. . . . Personally, I like not being noticed. I like to hang about the shadows of the world both as a writer and as a person; I dislike limelight, and the center of things is a place to watch rather than become involved in." (from "Comfort Cult: On the honest unlovliness of William Trevor's world" by Francine Prose in HARPER'S MAGAZINE, December 2002)