The best defense is a good story.
When I am writing a novel I try not to read great prose stylists into which I will fall.
I'm an amateur, so I read what's interesting to me.
I don't think the world is particularly responsive to - our world, the culture we are in, to art right now.
It's hard to read real fiction. It takes time. It takes a sustained attention.
The culture is with some rapidity fearing its imagination. I don't know why. Imagination is not of interest.