The Great Thing About Novels Is That

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

A Bee Rose Up From A Sun-filled Paper Cup, Off To Make Slum Honey From Some Diet Root Beer It Had Found Inside.

I've Never Been A Fast Reader. I'm Fickle; I Don't Finish Books I Start; I Put A Book Aside For Five, Ten Years And Then Take It Up Again.

A Problem That I Have With Everything Fictional Is That Writers Are Always Having To Come Up With Sudden Artillery Explosions In The Middle Of Whatever Is Going On. The Characters Are Having Interesting, Subtle Interactions, Or Jealousies, Or Whatever It Is, And Suddenly Some Gigantic Angry Eruption Has To Happen, A Giant Gasp Where Everyone Has To Scramble Around. That's The Point Where I'm Turned Off. I Want The Dynamic Range To Be A Little Smaller. I Don't Like The Big False Bangs.

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.