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" As a work gets more autobiographical, more intimate, more confessional, more embarrassing, it breaks into fragments. "

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" Honesty is the best policy; the only way out is deeper in: a candid confrontation with existence is dizzying, liberating. "

" Art, like science, progresses, and to me it's bizarre that a lot of acclaimed and popular and respectable books are not advancing the art form. "

" I argued strongly to the American publisher that 'Reality Hunger' should come out first. They thought that 'The Thing About Life' would have more appeal because it's on a broader topic; it's about mortality rather than art. "

" The ruling ethos of Seattle is forlorn apology for our animal impulses. "

" I began as a fiction writer - I had written three novels in my 20s and 30s. But as my work has gravitated towards literary nonfiction, or lyric essay or poetic essay, whatever you want to call it, I'm constantly beating my head against the wall 'cause I'm teaching a genre that's no longer that exciting to me and that I'm no longer practicing. "

" The American writer has his hands full, trying to understand and then describe and then make credible much of American reality. "

" I suspect the real reason the N.F.L. and N.B.A. don't want high schoolers and college underclassmen to play with their ball is that they don't want to jeopardize their relationship with National Collegiate Athletic Association, which serves as a sort of free minor league and unpaid promotional department for the pros. "

" I went to graduate school in Iowa City, at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where the most passionate thing I did was attend University of Iowa basketball games. "

" Basically, I really love work that puts the reader into a kind of vertigo, into a real doubt, and a beautiful way to convey that, a really perfect metaphor for that, is to make the reader also experience doubt. "

" We're completely confused about the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. To me, the moment you compose, you're fictionalising; the moment you remember, you're dreaming. It's ludicrous that we have to pretend that non-fiction has to be real in some absolute sense. "

" The trajectory of nearly all technology follows this downward and widening path: by the time a regular person is able to create his own TV network, it doesn't matter anymore that I have or am on a network. "

" My particular demigod is the Sonics point guard Gary Payton, who is one of the most notorious trash-talkers in the National Basketball Association. He's not really bad. He's only pretend bad - I know that - but he allows me to fantasize about being bad. "

" We like non-fiction because we live in fictitious times. "

" Every writer from Montaigne to William S. Burroughs has pasted and cut from previous work. Every artist, whether it's Warhol or, you know, Dangermouse or whoever. "

" I worry that I am not really a person anymore: I'm more of just a writing machine. I wonder what that has done to either my life and or my art. "

" Considering the relatively brief careers of professional athletes, teenagers who are good enough to play at the highest level should be able to exploit that market. "

" Straightforward fiction functions only as more Bubble Wrap, nostalgia, retreat. "

Straightforward

" Centenarians tend to be assertive, suspicious, and practical. "

" The movie - any sports movie - becomes a praise song to life here on earth, to physical existence itself, beyond striving, beyond economic necessity. "

" I still see life entirely through its Darwinian prism. I keep trying to shake off the aftereffects of writing 'The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead', and I find I can't. "

" I want the reader to join me on an intellectual and emotional journey into some major aspect of existence. "

" Seattle is still more Caucasian than most medium-sized cities. The sort of psychosexual politics of white fandom in context of black athletes who are also both very rich and slightly angry is just, to me, bottomlessly fascinating. "

" Nothing really changes: the individual's ability to project his message or throw his weight around remains minuscule. "

" The thing I hate the most in any kind of writing is self-righteousness. Where you pretend you don't have the same kinds of flaws your subject has. "

" Both of my parents were journalists, and my rebellion, such as it was, was to become a fiction writer. "

" We've been appropriating in art since Duchamp, and we've been appropriating in music since the first person was banging on drums. "

" Swimming is by far the best tonic I've found for my back. I'm not a good swimmer - I do the breaststroke or elementary backstroke in the slow lane - but when I took a two-week break from swimming I was surprised how much I missed it. "

" Sports - especially the NBA - function as a place where American society pretends to discuss and pretends to solve questions and historical agonies that can't possibly be solved within the realm of sports. "

" I think there are people who are born storytellers. I think of someone like T. C. Boyle or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I think really, without putting any pejorative on it, they're like carnival barkers, 'Come into the tent, and I'll tell you this story.' "

" I'm not super-polite or civil - I try to be civil, but I'm not into Seattle's niceties, and I'm not hugely wired into Seattle's natural beauty. "