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" 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. "

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" I've stopped reading about the death of books because it's wasteful and morbid and insulting to the authors, agents, publishers, booksellers, critics, and readers that keep the world community of fiction interesting. "

Patrick deWitt

Community

Books

Death

" I heard somewhere that whenever you write a book, people will ask you One Question about it over and over. And while I'm no expert in these matters, this is proving to be true. My first book dealt with a not-that-pleasant degenerate type, and the One Question was, 'Is this an autobiographical story?' "

" Some deeper part of me wants to write comical dialogue; I'd be foolish to not follow that impulse. Now I recognize that if there's energy to a section of work, you go where the energy is. It's a living thing, and you just follow it. "

Patrick deWitt

Work

Energy

" Whenever we changed schools, we had to make a new set of friends. At the time, of course, I hated it. But looking back now, I'm really glad I did, because it forces independence on you. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I carry a small spiral notebook with me at all times and have been doing this for many years. There's a shoe box in my closet filled with these notebooks, each riddled with notes and impressions, ideas, schemes, and soup recipes. "

Patrick deWitt

Small

Soup

" The reason I like Portland is the idea of going to a supermarket and knowing there's no way to be recognized. L.A. is so social. "

Patrick deWitt

Knowing

Going

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

" I think of myself as somebody who, in a moment-to-moment way, I'm quite happy. But I think I am a bit doubtful and wary of true happiness, and, like a lot of my friends, there's been a good degree of self-sabotage. "

" 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

" As a reader I want to be present and entertained. I don't want to be taught lessons, and I don't want to be spoken down to. I want to be treated as a peer and to be made to feel welcome. "

" 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. "

" I wrote for so many years in a bubble, the way everyone does, and there were large swaths of time where you think you're doing this for nothing. An audience is crucial, a back and forth with the invisible readers. "

" Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there. "

Patrick deWitt

Point

Starting

" The hardest thing in the world for a writer is to amass a readership. So many good books come out, and so many good books disappear. "

" 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. "

" I understand the desire to write and read about the death of publishing. It's a perversely and universally appealing topic. "

" I was halfway through a rough draft of 'The Sisters Brothers' when it came time to start the 'Terri' adaptation. "

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

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

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

" I know a lot of people who use the Internet really wisely. It enriches their lives in some way. "

" My instinct is to write under the cloak of an opaque historical setting. "

" I haven't read a lot of Westerns. But I wrote a Western. The influences were all cinematic. "

" 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

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

" I'm never doing anything by rote. I'm only on thin ice, and I think that that's a good place to be. I feel like when you push yourself like that, the rewards can be pretty great. "

" 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. "