Novelists Get To Direct The

So Much Of The Effort That Goes Into Writing Prose For Me Is About Making Sentences That Capture The Music That I'm Hearing In My Head. It Takes A Lot Of Work, Writing, Writing, And Rewriting To Get The Music Exactly The Way You Want It To Be.

I Prefer Old Books And Find Them More Relevant. I Dislike New Books. It's Like Drinking Wine That's Not Ready.

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.

I've Always Felt That The Writing I Responded To Most - The Novels And Stories That Compelled Me, That Felt Like They Described The World I Live In, With All Of Its Subjectivity, Irrationality, And Paradox, Were Those Which Made Free Use Of Myths And Symbols, Fantastic Occurences, Florid Metaphors, Linguistic Experiments, Etcetera - To Depict The Experiences Of Relatively 'realistic' Characters - On The Level Of Their Emotions And Psychology, Rather Than In Terms Of What Kinds Of Lives They Led Or What Kind Of Events They Experience.

There Were Days When No Kid Came Out Of His House Without Looking Around. The Week After Halloween Had A Quality Both Hungover And Ominous, The Light Pitched, The Sky Smashed Against The Rooftops.