If you can propose a memoir, even if you are eighteen years old - and what do you remember? What are you memeing? If you can propose a memoir, I believe someone will pay you to write it. And you will get a contract for nonfiction. And if it is about victimology in one way or another than you'll get more money. It's a sensation.

I read a lot of poetry. I read some history.

I always want to read Gore Vidal's nonfiction. Because everything he writes is an essay and it's worth reading.

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.

First-book novelists and storywriters haven't yet failed and so it's easier to publish them - you can gamble on a success. Whereas someone who has written four books that are highly literary and demanding and require you as a reader. They may not be republished.

People do not read, by and large. They watch television.