A beginning idea for a book might be: a boy emerges from a hole in the ground. He enters a house. The book will take place in the first ten minutes following his arrival.
Jesse BallFirst, he says, you have to go out into the world. This is not a simple matter of going outside one's door. No, that is simply going out. That's what one does when one is on the way to the store to buy a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a bottle of wine. When one goes out into the world, one is shedding preconceptions of past paths and ideas of past paths, and trying to move freely through an unsubstantiated and new geography.
Jesse BallSunday was always the best of days for being the self you had intended to be, but were not, for one reason or another.
Jesse BallClarity is the most important thing to me - in thinking - and so I try in the books to be as clear as possible.
Jesse BallI have a very basic notion of the structure the book might have - that's mostly it. The rest is luck and happenstance.
Jesse BallโฆThere are times when something is asked of us, and we find we must do it. There is no calculation involved, no measure of the necessity of the thing itself, the action that must be performed. There is simply an acknowledgment that we will do the thing in question, and then the thing is done, often at considerable personal cost. " "What goes into these decisions? What tiny factors, invisible, in the jutting edges of personality and circumstance, contribute to this inevitability?
Jesse Ball