You Don’t Have The Slightest Idea Of

I've Been An Advocate Against The View Of The Writer As A Partitioned Genius Hanging In Conceptual Space, Or Up On A Mountain, A Bringer Of Promethean Fire, Some Unique Transmission That Comes Out Of Nowhere. I Prefer The Opposite View - That Writers Come From Somewhere. They Read Things, And They Think About Them, And They Incorporate Other People's Thoughts.

What I'm Constantly Striving For In My Prose Is Clarity. So That, Ideally, The Writing Will Become So Transparent That The Reader Will Forget That The Medium Of Communication Is Language.

Every Artist Has Limits. No One Can Do Everything. It's Impossible.

As Much As I Revere Great Writing, And Am Still Humbled By It, Literary Activities Are No Longer Esoteric To Me. When I Read A Great Novel - Something That I Could Never Have Written Myself - I'm Still Looking At It A Little Bit Like A Technician.

No Matter How Enormous A Novel May Become, The Physical Act Of Reading Determines That There's No Way It Can Become A Communal Experience. To Read Is Intimate. It's Almost Masturbatory.