That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse!

As far as ideas about book design: I have plenty. But I also try and let people do their jobs.

I don't read books for pleasure, but in desperation.

Americans are genuinely and profoundly anti-intellectual. They are especially so in their pleasure-seeking, which is epically banal.

I don't think anything needs to happen in a book.

One can't say how one behaved or why, really. Such situations, they are far more complex than any either/or proposition. It is simplistic to produce events in pairs and lean them against each other like cards. I suppose if you a playing go or shogi, then such a thing might be helpful, but that is not life.

In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another.