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

I always write the best that I can. And I won't publish it until I have done it right.

What I try to do is read stuff that won't deal with the dangerous dark things I hope I am writing about.

Oh, a bookshop. Why not pop in and buy a little Kant? And perhaps just a quarter-pound of Kafka. Don't bother to wrap it, thanks. I'll eat it here.

If a writer is honest, if what is at stake for him can seem to matter to his readers, then his work may be read. But a writer will work anyway, as I do, and as I have, in part to explore this terra incognita, this dangerous ground I seem to need to risk.

My heroes are people like Philip Levine, who is simply like a god to me, as a writer. And he is a very good man, too.

Let's look at what the books are that are being produced. More and more they are being made like movies. To sell. They are being tested out.