If you focus on literature through only one small element of it, like the more scientific element of linguistics, then where is the joy that brought us literature in the first place, which is to have a story?

I think it's a great thing to hear the author reading. I've listened to CDs of Cheever and Updike reading their stories and Hemingway. To hear what their voices were like is amazing. Whether they're reading well or not, it's great to listen to the intonation and the beat of the guy who wrote the story.

There are always surprises. Life may be inveterately grim and the surprises disproportionately unpleasant, but it would be hardly worth living if there were no exceptions, no sunny days, no acts of random kindness.

At best, I consider flying an unavoidable necessity, a time to resurrect forgotten prayers and contemplate the end of all joy in a twisted howling heap of machinery; at worst, I rank it right up there with psychotic episodes and torture at the hands of malevolent strangers.

If you focus on literature through only one small element of it, like the more scientific element of linguistics, then where is the joy that brought us literature in the first place, which is to have a story?

I've always been a huge fan of theatre and performance. The idea of just the human voice and just this night. Live music is the same. They're doing it for you right now. It's an amazing thing. And if you perform a story properly, it can be a transporting, too.

All writers are egomaniacal, manic-depressive, drug-addicted alcoholics. You want to have that fix again.