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

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" 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. "

" 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'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. "

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

" I don't necessarily want to make people stomp and clap. I simply want to engage people. "

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

" The question of likability is a bit of a puzzler for me. You know, I don't write people with likability in mind. It's more whether or not I find them compelling. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Falling In Love

" I don't consider Los Angeles home anymore; ultimately, it was pretty negative, but I did spend my formative years in the Valley and all around L.A. proper. Through my teenage years and into my young adulthood, up until the age of 30, I spent a good amount of time there. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" I've been surprised at how much an unknown like myself can accomplish just by reaching out to people and pleading my case. Quotes for the book cover, reviews and interviews, readings and radio appearances - all this by simply moving ahead and making contact with folks I thought might enjoy the writing. "

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

" Looking around, I saw so many unhappy adults, people who loathed their jobs, and I didn't want to be one of them. "

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

" 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? "