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" A lot of authors, judging by their list, will put anything out that they finish... That's the worst model I've heard of in my life. It's just idiotic. Why wouldn't you just wait for the good ones? "

Patrick deWitt

You

Wait

My Life

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" I kept trying to write these books that were sort of outside of my realm, and I kept failing. "

" I've always felt so fortunate to have writing to turn to every day. I'm obsessed with it. "

" I am a homebody, something that lends itself to my profession. "

" I haven't read hardly any Westerns, to tell you the truth. "

" I am increasingly unimpressed by works of art that require a college degree to understand. I think that art should be for everyone. And people should be moved by it. "

" At the age of seventeen, I decided I would spend my life writing fiction. I didn't know what this entailed, exactly - a room, I supposed. A room and books and paper and solitude. "

" I come by writing dialogue fairly naturally, I've got a chatty family; I'm a bit of a voyeur, and if I'm ever in a public place, I automatically find myself listening. "

" Many's the dead author whose body of work has been marred by overzealous publishers or family members. If this happens to me, I vow to seek out the responsible parties and haunt them to the point of death. "

Patrick deWitt

Body

Dead

" I am a bit prudish, I think. It's hard for me to write about sex, and I don't really care to read about it, either. "

" Especially if you're endeavouring daily to write your own books, you read with a degree of - well, it's hard to forget you're a writer when you're reading. "

" By the time I left the bar, I was 30. I was a dishwasher. They call it a bar-back, but essentially, I washed dishes for a living. I had no high-school diploma, I had no agent, and my literary successes were non-existent... but it was the only thing I ever wanted to do, so I did feel trapped. "

" The theme of luck comes up a lot. It's something I thought about before, why some people are lucky and some people aren't lucky. It seems like some people you meet can sort of cultivate luck, and I've always been fascinated by that. "

" The initial spark, your affection for the characters, all those things can disappear. It's a perilous thing. "

" When your protagonist bores you, you're in trouble. "

" Unfunny people should be locked up, the key tossed into a smelter. "

" The nice thing about writing at home is that it's almost as though I'm doing it already. I get out of bed thinking of my work, and I don't have to go anywhere to do it. "

" Every industry has slack times, and everyone has bad days at work. "

" I was reading my son some fables; it made for good nighttime reading. These stories were very vivid and very strange and occasionally bizarrely violent. It was a very free landscape. "

" I don't know that I'd call myself an optimist. "

" A lot of my favourite books - I should say, not much happens in the books! It's much more about the points of view of the author more than anything else. "

Patrick deWitt

View

Books

" Bernie Madoff is probably more nuanced then I'm giving him credit for, but I just couldn't get under his skin. "

" I don't know that happy people are interesting to write about - or to read about. "

" I've got a publicist at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt who's been working little miracles for me, but it's true the budgets aren't what they once were in terms of advertisement and book tours. "

Patrick deWitt

True

Book

" When you meet someone you love, whether or not they love you back, something occurs in you that makes you want to improve yourself. "

" I felt like love has been underrepresented - unironic love, just actually really falling in love. "

" I'm not an enormous proponent of plot as a reader. It's about other things; my reading has become specialized over the years. "

" If you're not riddled with doubt, you've probably done something wrong. "

" It's healthy to have interests besides books. "

" All the books I was reading as a teenager were about individuals having adventures. So I thought that was what writers were supposed to do: to go out on the road. "

Patrick deWitt

Road

Thought

" Certain writers look down their noses at plot, and I think I might have been one of them until I tried it. "