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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Patrick deWitt

Life

Facts

Feel

" 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 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. "

Patrick deWitt

Sisters

Minimal

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Patrick deWitt

You

Find

" 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. "

" Lies can be wonderful things, and when a lie is told artfully, if it's done with a degree of craftsmanship, I can't help but admire the liar. "

" I am a homebody, something that lends itself to my profession. "

" When you're 8 years old, and you've become subconsciously familiar with the layout and design of Black Sparrow books, and you know the difference between Miles Davis and John Coltrane, something is bound to stick. "

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

Patrick deWitt

Horrific

Working

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

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

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

" 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

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

" When your protagonist bores you, you're in trouble. "

" 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. "