To A Novelist, Fluidity Is The Ultimate

The Very Reason I Write Is So That I Might Not Sleepwalk Through My Entire Life.

I Wrote 'white Teeth' In The Late Nineties. I Didn't Really Feel Trepidatious About It. It Was A Different Time.

I Recognize Myself To Be An Intensely Naive Person. Most Novelists Are, Despite Frequent Pretensions To Deep Socio-political Insight.

I Don't Ask Myself What Did I Live For, Said Carlene Strongly. That Is A Man's Question. I Ask Whom Did I Live For.

Every Genuinely Literary Style, From The High Authorial Voice To Foster Wallace And His Footnotes-within-footnotes, Requires The Reader To See The World From Somewhere In Particular, Or From Many Places. So Every Novelist's Literary Style Is Nothing Less Than An Ethical Strategy - It's Always An Attempt To Get The Reader To Care About People Who Are Not The Same As He Or She Is.