Literature should not be exclusive, it should be inclusive. My general view is that you can't, based on your own experience, project what a book will do for someone else. That's why I don't review books.

You can't write ... on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by yourself.

In order to write novels for a living - it's not pathological, but I do think and worry and brood and fidget about stuff that I'm working on.

Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.

I get very involved in the internal logic of sentences.

I didn't feel up to writing about 9/11. If I were to write about it, it would take me years.

Theres a lot to be said for doing what youre not supposed to do, and the rewards of doing what youre supposed to do are more subtle and take longer to become apparent, which maybe makes it less attractive. But your life is the blueprint you make after the building is built.