Names generate meaning in a short amount of space — they provoke thoughts, questions. That's something I like doing. Of course, you have to be careful. Sometimes it can alienate the reader, it can be another level of mediation, to make a character carry the great burden of a metaphoric name. The character can be a device before he or she becomes a person, and that can be a bad thing for a writer who wants to offer up a kind of emotional proximity in the work. It's a constant struggle, the desire to be playful and the desire to communicate on some very stark emotional level.
Joshua FerrisThe main questions of everyday life are too enormous to answer in any definitive sense.
Joshua FerrisI think a fairly common behavior among fiction writers is that they want to help. They're generally charitable people. They're interested in the world. They're curious, they're empathetic. They understand suffering. They don't turn away from that. But what they do is essentially useless. Except for the sake of the thing itself.
Joshua FerrisOne thing that I discovered about myself is I really don't like traveling. I feel like it's a terrible personal failing, but I was so satisfied to arrive at the conclusion.
Joshua FerrisI come from a very illustrious line of divorces. We love to get divorced in my family. My mother and father have been married four times each - eight ceremonies with the best of intentions.
Joshua Ferris