The education of young people is narrowing. They cannot have the scope they used to have. They are being taught in high school by people earnest, still, but maybe less well-prepared than we would want them to be - but not because they are stupid or churlish.

I know important literary writers who can't get published.

You have to read history. You have to have a sense of history.

I'm an amateur, so I read what's interesting to me.

If there is some blood on the pages then you have some readership.

I'm not a philosopher. I am the next thing to a jock, which is a novelist.

The culture is with some rapidity fearing its imagination. I don't know why. Imagination is not of interest.