Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Every writer hopes his or her book will be its own thing.
There's a moment in every book when the book turns and it surprises me.
Whenever I start a new book, I think, 'This is the most interesting subject of all time. It's sad, I'll never enjoy writing another book as much as I enjoy this one.' Every time, I'm convinced. And then I change my mind when I start the next book.
An idea has been running in my head that books lose and gain qualities in the course of time, and I have worried over it a good deal, for what seemed to be a paradox, I felt to be a truth.
Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.
I was aware that there is an expectation that writers inevitably falter at this stage, that they fail to live up to the promise of their first successful book, that the next book never pleases the way the prior one did. It simply increased my sense of being challenged.
The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.
Discovering the 'impossible' ending to a new book makes me sick with joy and relief.
The unfolding of a story is both as exciting and as difficult for each and every novel I've written, regardless of time and place.
I read just endlessly, ceaselessly, almost every book, it seems!