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

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

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" 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. "

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" I'm either enjoying myself or I'm not. And if I'm not enjoying myself, something's gone terribly wrong. "

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" My interest in words and literature is always changing. And every day of work is different, and it doesn't feel laborious in the way that, say, washing dishes did. I'm quite happy to be doing what I'm doing, and I feel very lucky. "

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

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" The impetus for 'The Sisters Brothers' was it occurred to me that there was no neurosis in westerns, or there's a minimal amount of it. "

" 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. "

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