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" Usually by the time I finish a book tour I've just about had it with the book. "

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" I want that which is hilarious and that which is heartbreaking to occupy the same territory in the book because I think they very often occupy the same territory in life, much as we try to separate them. "

" Writers are people who put pen to paper every day. "

" My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination. "

" I think it would be harder for me not to write comedy because the comic view of things is the one that comes most naturally to me. "

" I can be glib and truthful all at once. "

" I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other. And what kind of satisfactions they derive from it. And why there is always a cost, and a price to be paid. "

" If my career continues along its current arc, people will probably look at me and see a writer who is obsessed with the relationship between rich and poor and with how the rich somehow or other always manage to betray the poor, even when they don't mean to. "

" People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny. "

" You can be interested in a Jane Smiley novel whether or not anyone says a word. She enters into her characters' thoughts with great understanding and depth. "

" Not everyone writes well from a child's point of view. "

" I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry. "

" I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody's fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about. "

" I don't think there's a shortage of material in the world. Or in my head. I just pray for continued good health, because I've got other stories to tell. "

" What does it feel like to be a parent? What does it feel like to be a child? And that's what stories do. They bring you there. They offer a dramatic explanation, which is always different from an expository explanation. "

" You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical, it's because I really don't know how it works, but I trust that it does. I try to write the way I read, in order to find out what happens next. "

" What comes easiest for me is dialogue. Sometimes when my characters are speaking to me, I have to slow them down so that I'm not simply taking dictation. "

" Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that. "

" If there's an enduring theme in my work, it's probably the effects of class on American life. "

" I think a lot of what is going on with kids who get pushed too far and attempt either murder or suicide is that they are trying to deal with their own non-existence for the people who are supposed to care most for them. "

" Some authors have a very hard time understanding that in order to be faithful to the spirit of the book, it's almost always impossible to remain faithful to the text. You have to make changes. "

" I read pretty voraciously. If it's good, I don't care what it is. "

" America has always been a nation of small places, and as we lose them, we're losing part of ourselves. "

" By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets. "

" When I start getting close to the end of a novel, something registers in the back of my mind for the next novel, so that I usually don't write, or take notes. And I certainly don't begin. I just allow things to percolate for a while. "

" Truth be told, I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted. "

" You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel. "

" Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me. "

" Cary Grant never won an Oscar, primarily, I suspect, because he made everything look so effortless. Why reward someone for having fun, for being charming? "

" I get and read an enormous number of first novels. "

" I looked back at some of my earlier published stories with genuine horror and remorse. I got thinking, How many extant copies might there be, who owns them, and do they keep their doors locked? "