You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

Hi, this is Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm. Today, my guest is

Ned Roram, a composer and diarist, most recently memoirist, author of Knowing When to Stop, a memoir

published by Simon & Schuster recently. I thought I'd begin in media race as it was. I seemed to remember that

Paul Boles' diary was called Without Stopping. And I wondered if yours was in some crazy, unconscious

way a response to that title.

It wasn't a diary, in fact, it was a memoir, too.

And if it were unconscious, of course, I wouldn't know.

But, yes, it did occur to me.

And the...

But there is no relationship as far as the meaning, because his title comes from Alice in Wonderland.

You have to run very fast to be able to stay in one place and therefore says the Red Queen

to the White Queen.

And my title comes, which may subconsciously have been influenced by Paul Bowles, who has been not without

influence in both my life and my music. But I feel that every work of art knows when to stop,

and insofar as a work of art is inimitable,

and that the artist, be it a sculptor,

or be it Michelangelo or Stravinsky or Beethoven or Henry James,

there's not a word too many or too few.

...