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I've never really been met with indifference, where they say, 'Who cares?' I think that's what good art is supposed to do. It's not supposed to make y...more

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I do feel that literature should be demystified. What I object to is what is happening in our era: literature is only something you get at school as a...more

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First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming lik...more

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Writing is a habit, an addiction, as powerful and overmastering an urge as putting a bottle to your lips or a spike in your arm. Call it the impulse t...more

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But then, that’s the beauty of writing stories—each one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and...more

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I was reading, absorbed in an assault on K2 by a team of Japanese mountaineers, my lungs constricting in the thin burning air, the deadly sting of win...more

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I have an idea and a first line -- and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I’m going to say, or where it’s going. I have some ...more

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In order to create you have to believe in your ability to do so and that often means excluding whole chunks of normal life, and, of course, pumping yo...more

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I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the...more

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In order to create you have to believe in your ability to do so and that often means excluding whole chunks of normal life, and, of course, pumping yo...more