I Love The Description Of Gothic Churches

I Belong To The Middle Class That Grew Up Very Influenced By The Catholic Church. The People Of The Novel Are From A More Pagan And Practical World In Which The Christianity Is Just A Veneer.

We Absolutely Believed In Heaven And Hell, Purgatory, And Even Limbo. I Mean, They Were Actually Closer To Us Than Australia Or Canada, That They Were Real Places.

I Used To Take Five Or Six Books Away And Bring Five Or Six Books Back. Nobody Gave Me Direction Or Advice And I Read Much In The Way That A Boy Might Watch Television.

Without The Book Business It Would Be Difficult Or Impossible For True Books To Find Their True Readers And Without That Solitary (and Potentially Subversive) Alone With A Book The Whole Razzmatazz Of Prizes, Banquets, Television Spectaculars, Bestseller Lists, Even Literature Courses, Editors And Authors, Are All Worthless. Unless A Book Finds Lovers Among Those Solitary Readers, It Will Not Live . . . Or Live For Long.

The Imagination Demands That Life Be Told Slant Because Of Its Need Of Distance.