Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people.

Realism can break a writer's heart.

I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers' emotion or the way in which you engage the readers' emotions can be very indirect. You could come at it through irony or comedy, etcetera, and you could capture people's sympathies and feelings kind of by stealth if you like.

Writers have been in terrible situations and have yet managed to produce extraordinary work.

I don't like books that play to the gallery, but I've become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.

How to forgive the world for its beauty, which merely disguises its ugliness; for its gentleness, which merely cloaks its cruelty; for its illusion of continuity, seamlessly, as the night follows the day, so to speak- whereas in reality life is a series of brutal raptures, falling upon your defenseless hands, like the blows of a woodman's axe?

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.