I'm confused, and brilliant books help me to be less so.
I don't read books for pleasure, but in desperation.
If Americans are to read something that is difficult, they will only do so supposing they will be admired for having done it.
Americans are genuinely and profoundly anti-intellectual. They are especially so in their pleasure-seeking, which is epically banal.
I like small books. I like durable books. I like plain books. I like small type and thin pages.
As far as ideas about book design: I have plenty. But I also try and let people do their jobs.
A person always has a chance to protest this or that.
A book can just be a description of a stick being snapped in half. If the reader is brought to feel the plight of the stick, well, you can imagine what that would be like.
I don't think anything needs to happen in a book.
Clarity is the most important thing to me - in thinking - and so I try in the books to be as clear as possible.
Much of my work has been done in first person.
I believe my friends think I'm funny. All the books are full of humor. Maybe it is a quiet sort of humor that masquerades as not-much-at-all. It is certainly easy to miss.
I begin with an image of some sort, just as if you saw something out of a window, and then went to the window to see what it was.
I have a very basic notion of the structure the book might have - that's mostly it. The rest is luck and happenstance.
I don't start with an idea or concept in the sense that I flesh out an idea or concept and set it at the center of something.
Different times and different structures make more sense at one point in life than at another.
A beginning idea for a book might be: a boy emerges from a hole in the ground. He enters a house. The book will take place in the first ten minutes following his arrival.
The books turn out to be about things afterwards. I don't go into them with concepts, for the most part.
I have a different purpose in writing each novel. Some of them seem more similar than others, but the purposes are always different.
I want to say less, and it's easier to say less.
I'm clearer now in what I want to say, and I know better how to say just that.
I am clearer in my mind and a bit less confused than I used to be.
I'd say writing is easier for me now than it once was, but I do less of it.
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