The main object of the novel is to represent life. . . The success of a work of art, to my mind, may be measured by the degree to which it produces a certain illusion; that illusion makes it appear to us for the time that we have lived another life - that we have had a miraculous enlargement of experience.
A lot of young artists in particular think you can just do one great thing and then sit back and collect checks. Most artists, even people like Dan Clowes, who's one of my heroes, don't just do comics. He does paid illustration. He writes screenplays, and so forth, working and selling lots of different things.