Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Writing is such a solitary thing, so it's nice, when I'm discouraged, to see people still have such faith in fiction.
Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.
Fiction is no longer the dominant storytelling device of our time. In the 19th century it worked great, and fiction was the king, but it's not the king any more.
I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized.
Fiction makes your dreams come true, and, as a writer, fiction allows you to delve into the area of miracles.
The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.
Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth.
Novelists are no more moral or certain than anybody else; we are ideologically adrift, and if we are any good then our writing will live in several places at once. That is both our curse and our charm.
God gets the great stories. Novelists must make do with more mundane fictions.
My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world is an extraordinary shoddy, dirty, dingy world.