I'm A Sucker For Interiors And Carefully,

I Wanted My First Novel To Be A Veritable Infarct Of Narrative Cloggers-the Trick Being To Feel Your Way Through Each Clog By Blowing It Up Until Its Obstructiveness Finally Reveals Not Blank Mass But Unlooked-for Seepage Points Of Passage.

Writing Has To Do With Truth-telling. When You're Writing, Let's Say, An Essay For A Magazine, You Try To Tell The Truth At Every Moment. You Do Your Best To Quote People Accurately And Get Everything Right. Writing A Novel Is A Break From That: Freedom. When You're Writing A Novel, You Are In Charge; You Can Beef Things Up.

History Isn't A Seesaw. If You Have A Really Bad Regime On One Side, The Actions On The Other Side Don't Automatically Become Good. It Doesn't Work That Way.

Gandhi Was Important For Another Reason As Well: His Country Was Suffering Under The British Empire, And Yet He Was Leading A Very Singular Kind Of Resistance To It. At The Time He Was Speaking About The Violence In Europe, His Followers Were In Jail As Prisoners Of The British Government.

The Job Of The Novel Is To Be True To The Confusion, But Not So Confusing That You Turn The Reader Off.