Among contemporaries, I hugely admire Alice Munro, our Chekhov, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and John Updike, American masters all. I also believe that the voice of Gordon Lish is astoundingly original and sorrowful.
Whoever utters 'Kafkaesque' has neither fathomed nor intuited nor felt the impress of Kafka's devisings. If there is one imperative that ought to accompany any biographical or critical approach, it is that Kafka is not to be mistaken for the Kafkaesq...
Many writers were picked on as children. Why? Because they were weird from the get-go. They were often to be found at the back of the class smelling erasers, or talking to caterpillars, or walking down the street with an encyclopedia balanced on thei...
I am a toxico-nutritional neuro-epidemiologist. It's the study of neurological disorders caused by a mixture of toxins and malnutrition using epidemiological methods... We are just three or four in the world, even fewer than sword swallowers.
There has seldom if ever a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idio...
It is clear to all that the animal organism is a highly complex system consisting of an almost infinite series of parts connected both with one another and, as a total complex, with the surrounding world, with which it is in a state of equilibrium.
From a population point of view, it's actually very important that as few people as possible get the flu. People getting the flu is not a private matter. The risk for healthy people is really about your friends and neighbors and fellow travelers.
The message of body acceptance built on Jennifer Lawrence's soundbites only empowers those who are willing to ignore the fact that her statements reinforce our current cultural views rather than subverting them.
When I settled to writing seriously, which would be in my 30s, I did expect to be published eventually, but my aspirations weren't very high. A published book and a few appreciative readers was my idea of heaven.
I don't do guilt, but if I were to squint in that direction, it's probably enjoying simple computer games like Zuma. But I regard such things as part of my hand-eye coordination workout.
People who assume my books are only about quilts obviously haven't read them! I've always known that my books are about quilters - in other words, people - rather than quilts or quilting.
If you focus on the humanity of your stories, your characters, then the horror will be stronger, scarier. Without the humanity, the horror becomes nothing more than a tawdry parlor trick. All flash and no magic, and worst of all, no heart.
Confidence is highly overrated when it comes to creating literature. A writer who is overly confident will not engage in the struggle to get it exactly right on the page - but rather, will assume that she's getting it right without the struggle.
And from the look on his face I could see he was one of the lucky ones, one of those people who like doing what they're good at. That's rare. When you see that in a person, you can't miss it.
My second novel, 'The Luminaries,' is set in the New Zealand gold rushes of the 1860s, though it's not really a historical novel in the conventional sense. So far, I've been describing it as 'an astrological murder mystery.'
'The Luminaries' is such a different book to 'The Rehearsal.' There are only a couple of things that link the two books: there's a certain preoccupation with looking at relationships from the outside, being shut out of human intimacy; and then there'...
Every few years, I think, 'Maybe now I'm finally smart enough or sophisticated enough to understand 'Ulysses.' So I pick it up and try it again. And by page 10, as always, I'm like, 'What the hell?'
If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian...I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too.
Her solitary nature means she needs a family to keep her from loneliness my gregarious nature means I will never have to worry about being alone...
This corner of history was as real as the tiled floor under our feet or the wooden tabletop under our fingers. The people to whom it had happened had actually lived and breathed and felt and thought and then died, as we did - as we would.
Anything that can unambiguously represent two values - while resisting, just a wee bit, randomly flipping from the state you want retained into the opposite state - can encode binary data.
