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" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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?' "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" By the time I left the bar, I was 30. I was a dishwasher. They call it a bar-back, but essentially, I washed dishes for a living. I had no high-school diploma, I had no agent, and my literary successes were non-existent... but it was the only thing I ever wanted to do, so I did feel trapped. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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