I've only read three books by Stephen King. When I was 10 I read 'The Long Walk,' one of his pseudonymous Bachman books. In my early 20s, while trapped on a family vacation, I read 'The Dark Half,' which taught me a word I have never forgotten: psychopomp. Now I have read '11/22/63.'

The novel is a highly corrupt medium, after all - in the end the vast majority of them simply aren't that great, and are destined to be forgotten.

It's very important, at least to me as a writer, that there be some rules on the table when I'm writing. Rules come from genres. You're writing in a genre, there are rules, which is great because then you can break the rules. That's when really exciting things happen.

I mean, when you're tired of book reviews, you're tired of life.

In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone's just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself. And even after you've figured it out and done it, you'll never know whether you were right or wrong. You'll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things might have gone better if you hadn't.

We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.

Becoming an author changes your attitude too. Once you see where books come from, and how they're made, they never seem quite as sacred again.