Zitat des Tages von Patrick deWitt:
Certain writers look down their noses at plot, and I think I might have been one of them until I tried it.
More and more, I find myself turning away from everything relating to contemporary society. I don't know how healthy it is, but I am creating a very private bubble that I live in.
Humorous writing is often thought of as substandard in comparison to work with a more dramatic or tragic intent. I don't know what to say to this except that I disagree wholeheartedly.
At the age of seventeen, I decided I would spend my life writing fiction. I didn't know what this entailed, exactly - a room, I supposed. A room and books and paper and solitude.
I've always felt so fortunate to have writing to turn to every day. I'm obsessed with it.
The hardest thing in the world for a writer is to amass a readership. So many good books come out, and so many good books disappear.
I am increasingly unimpressed by works of art that require a college degree to understand. I think that art should be for everyone. And people should be moved by it.
I don't know that happy people are interesting to write about - or to read about.
I am a homebody, something that lends itself to my profession.
When you meet someone you love, whether or not they love you back, something occurs in you that makes you want to improve yourself.
My first book didn't even have a Canadian publisher. And that upset me, because I so wanted a readership up there.
Love is dangerous; it's not something to be trifled with. As good as it feels on the way in, it feels that much worse on the way out.
The nice thing about writing at home is that it's almost as though I'm doing it already. I get out of bed thinking of my work, and I don't have to go anywhere to do it.
It's healthy to have interests besides books.
I was halfway through a rough draft of 'The Sisters Brothers' when it came time to start the 'Terri' adaptation.
Looking around, I saw so many unhappy adults, people who loathed their jobs, and I didn't want to be one of them.
Every industry has slack times, and everyone has bad days at work.
Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there.
I know a lot of people who use the Internet really wisely. It enriches their lives in some way.
I wouldn't want to write a biography of anyone. I'd feel too inhibited by the facts and too much pressure to do the subject's life justice.
The question of likability is a bit of a puzzler for me. You know, I don't write people with likability in mind. It's more whether or not I find them compelling.
My instinct is to write under the cloak of an opaque historical setting.
If you're not riddled with doubt, you've probably done something wrong.
One of the nice things about writing is you can take essentially painful things in your life and turn them into something that might be useful, or at least entertaining, to somebody else.
If I were to continue to work in an established mode, it stands to reason the work would be limited by this - that it would never surpass the prior work in quality.
Bernie Madoff is probably more nuanced then I'm giving him credit for, but I just couldn't get under his skin.
I am a bit prudish, I think. It's hard for me to write about sex, and I don't really care to read about it, either.
Lies can be wonderful things, and when a lie is told artfully, if it's done with a degree of craftsmanship, I can't help but admire the liar.
I don't necessarily want to make people stomp and clap. I simply want to engage people.
All the books I was reading as a teenager were about individuals having adventures. So I thought that was what writers were supposed to do: to go out on the road.
I heard somewhere that whenever you write a book, people will ask you One Question about it over and over. And while I'm no expert in these matters, this is proving to be true. My first book dealt with a not-that-pleasant degenerate type, and the One Question was, 'Is this an autobiographical story?'
I felt like love has been underrepresented - unironic love, just actually really falling in love.
I've stopped reading about the death of books because it's wasteful and morbid and insulting to the authors, agents, publishers, booksellers, critics, and readers that keep the world community of fiction interesting.
Whenever we changed schools, we had to make a new set of friends. At the time, of course, I hated it. But looking back now, I'm really glad I did, because it forces independence on you.
The initial spark, your affection for the characters, all those things can disappear. It's a perilous thing.
I was intentionally curbing the impulse to be funny and hiding the ability. I wrote any number of very serious attempts at poems, short stories, novels - horrible. At a certain point, I recognized that it was fun to write dialogue that had a degree of lightness and humor.
