But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.
If I want to feel as if I'm being sucked down a fathomless gloomy tunnel for hours and hours then I have a complete set of Schopenhauer at home.
I've never really understood that whole thing of writers avoiding other writers' novels while they're working on their own.
Mystery, investigation, false leads, solution - we associate that structure with genre fiction, but it exists in our real lives, too. There's no reason why literary fiction shouldn't be able to acknowledge that and make it fresh.
I love sentences. I love characters. But most of all, perhaps, I love to work on plot, and that may be where my natural gifts lie, if I have any. I like to think hard about plots in TV shows and films.
I never really have blank page syndrome. I don't get blocked. I have a plan for my novel before I start which, although incomplete, probably contains enough material for several novels by a quieter kind of writer. And I try to get my arms around that material and see where it takes me.
The reason I start a novel is because there's something that excites me and I want to explore it.
One choice can transform you!
The battles, the fights, the bruises, the bites. That's the way true love grows.
I think the New Bohemians' inability to say no was a big part of our problem.
To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect