Gossip. The more you talk about why people do things, the more ideas you have about how the world works.
Eavesdrop and write it down from memory – gives you a stronger sense of how people talk and what their concerns are. I love to eavesdrop!
I discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life’s mystery and unpredictability, of life’s generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.
English majors understand human nature better than economists do.
There is a sociology of horses, as well as a psychology. It is most evident in the world of horse racing, where many horses are gathered together, where year after year, decade after decade, they do the same, rather simple thing – run in races and try to win.
Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.
Oh, that sound? I’m in the hot tub, reading a novel.
There are several methods for introducing your children to driving, and all of them are bad. Probably the worst is to put it off.
All equestrians, if they last long enough, learn that riding in whatever form is a lifelong sport and art, an endeavor that is both familiar and new every time you take the horse out of his stall or pasture.
Somehow, knowing that Alzheimer’s is coming mocks all one’s aspirations – to tell stories, to think through certain issues as only a novel can do, to be recognised for one’s accomplishments and hard work – in a way that old familiar death does not.
A theory of creativity is actually just a metaphor. A pool of ideas, a well of memories, a voice.
An urban novelist never minds a little decay.
Before I write a novel, images float around in my head that work like icons – they are meaningless in themselves, but serve as reminders.
A love story, at least a convincing one, requires three elements – the lover, the beloved, and the adventures they have together.
In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.
I wrote the Dickens book because I loved Dickens, not because I felt a kinship with him, but after writing the book it seemed to me that there was at least one similarity between us and that was that Dickens loved to write and wrote with the ease and conviction of breathing. Me, too.
In December 1998, I considered myself an expert on love. I was almost a year into a relationship, one that had grown more slowly than I had wished, but once it flowered it was much more stimulating than any marriage or relationship I had known.
In many ways, being honest about ‘Huckleberry Finn’ goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans.
In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion.
Most of my childhood revolved around wondering when we would be blown up by the Russians. I couldn’t stand the news, I knew that if the missile were launched, mortality would arrive in half an hour, so I spent a lot of my childhood feeling that I was 30 minutes from being dead.