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

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

" I was intentionally curbing the impulse to be funny and hiding the ability. I wrote any number of very serious attempts at poems, short stories, novels - horrible. At a certain point, I recognized that it was fun to write dialogue that had a degree of lightness and humor. "

" 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. "

" Working in a bar was a horrific idea for me. "

" After 'The Sisters Brothers,' I tried to write a contemporary story dealing with an investment adviser in New York City who moves to Paris. I did all this research, but after about a year and any number of pages written, I was bored stiff. "

" 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. "

" The idea is this: It's important to upset one's work habits, to topple the cart for each project. "

" All of my close friends are emotional train wrecks. This is what makes our lives interesting - constantly doubting ourselves, worrying, wondering if we've made a mistake. Could we have done better? Are we good people? Are we bad people? "

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

Falling In Love

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

" My first book didn't even have a Canadian publisher. And that upset me, because I so wanted a readership up there. "

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

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

" 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. "

" I've fallen in love in my life a few times. It's the most exciting part of being alive - that I've experienced, anyway. "

" 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?' "

" After school, I got a job in a shop in Hollywood and shared an apartment with a friend. I promptly lost my job and got evicted from my apartment, and that happened several times. "

" 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. "

" More and more, I find myself turning away from everything relating to contemporary society. I don't know how healthy it is, but I am creating a very private bubble that I live in. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The question about my Canadianness comes up a lot, and I'm never quite sure what to say about it. I've carved a life out for myself in Oregon, and it feels like home, not because it's the States but because that's where my friends are and where my son is. "

" 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. "

" One of the nice things about writing is you can take essentially painful things in your life and turn them into something that might be useful, or at least entertaining, to somebody else. "

" I wouldn't want to write a biography of anyone. I'd feel too inhibited by the facts and too much pressure to do the subject's life justice. "

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

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