As long as a man had the courage to reject what society told him to do, he could live life on his own terms. To what end? To be free. But free to what end? To read books, to write books, to think.
He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.
Just think it, and chances are it will happen.
The tone of every book is slightly different; there’s a music that each has that is distinct from all the others.
Farts come from no one and nowhere; they are anonymous emanations that belong to the group as a whole, and even when every person in the room can point to the culprit, the only sane course of action is denial.
I don’t think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.
The joke is the purest, most essential form of storytelling. Every word has to count.
I don’t know why I write. If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn’t have to. But it is a compulsion. You don’t choose it, it chooses you. And I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody.
Nobody asks you to do this. The world out there is not panting after another novelist. We choose it.
It’s like a mathematical law, Grace.
I think all writers are a bit crazy; Damaged souls, incapable of doing anything else.
In the old physics, three times two equals six and two times three equals 6 are reversible propositions. Not in quantum physics. Three times two and two times three are two different matters, distinct and separate propositions.
I had made an empirical discovery and it carried all the weight of a mathematical proof.
Let me tell you, there’s no better medicine than a friendly card game for sloughing off the cares of a workaday world.
When I am writing, even though it’s hard and I do struggle often, I am happier than when I’m not writing. I feel alive. Whereas when I’m not writing, I feel like your common every-day neurotic.
Each man, therefore, is the entire world, bearing within his genes a memory of all mankind. Or as Leibniz put it: ‘Every living substance is a perpetual living mirror of the universe’
I woke up one day and thought: I want to write a book about the history of my body. I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.
History is present in all my novels. And whether I am directly talking about the sociological moment or just immersing my character in the environment, I am very aware of it.
How is it possible for someone who believes that the world was created in six days to have a rational conversation with me, who doesnt believe that, about other possibilities?
Guilt kept me going. It was impossible not to blame myself for what had happened, but even guilt was a comfort. It was a human feeling, a sign that I was still attached to the same world that other men lived in.