If ever the Greeks needed a Trojan horse, it is now.
Your memories from your early childhood seem to have such purchase on your emotions. They are so concrete.
The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer.
A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something crucial is at stake.
The writer has to be brave, I think.
Yes, I did try acting when I was in high school and I was terrible at it. So I definitely have had the experience of being bad at artistic endeavor.
That was one of the reasons I became a writer - I never really had that many friends. I would read a lot, and listen to music. And that was my life.
Anyone who grew up in the psychedelic '60s probably experienced their share of hypnagogic fireworks. Just as sex got me hooked on anatomy, so drugs were probably what first got me interested in entoptic phenomena, phosphenes, and hypnagogic imagery.
I've always been dead set against festivals - really suspicious and wary.
I've gotten death threats, yes. I have. I think anytime you shine a spotlight on homosexuality or minorities and you try and say they are as normal or as worthy as acceptance as others, the people who are on the fringe don't like that and they will come after you. And they have come after me.
It was time for me to spend more time with my wife. I'm not saying I do spend more time with my wife, because she would throw me out of the house, but we have breakfast together. I never did.