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But there is no doubt that to attempt a novel of ideas is to give oneself a handicap: the parochialism of our culture is intense. For instance, decade...more

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I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, th...more

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Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.

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Yet I am incapable of writing the only kind of novel which interests me: a book powered with an intellectual or moral passion strong enough to create ...more

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Every evening I sat on the music-stool and wrote down my day, and it was as if I, Anna, were nailing Anna to the page. Every day I shaped Anna, said: ...more

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I am a person who continually destroys the possibilities of a future because of the numbers of alternative viewpoints I can focus on the present.

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I write all these remarks with exactly the same feeling as if I were writing a letter to post into the distant past: I am so sure that everything we n...more