Quote

'The Paris Review's mandate has been the same for fifty years. First and foremost, this magazine is for writers; the editors' task is to support and celebrate them, especially at the beginning of their careers, but also as they move forward, venturing stories that are creative, risky, new.

In its fifty-first year of publication, 'The Paris Review' continues to search for new ways to bring together writers and readers.

The hardest thing about being an unpublished writer is that there's always that voice in your head that asks if you're really being a fool. You might just really stink and not know it. You have to have a lot of blind faith in the process. You have to like it so much that you're going to do it anyway.

I was incredibly lucky that my first book found a large and loyal readership. It changed my life - from being a very withdrawn adult to living in Paris as a full-time writer. It has also given me enormous confidence.

If you want to be a writer, you write. Everybody wants to get published. You gotta play your long game.

I had several publishers, and they were all the same. They all wanted salacious. And everybody is writing autobiographies, and that's one reason why I'm not going to do it. If young Posh Spice can write her autobiography, then I don't want to write one!

I have several writer friends, but I don't involve them in my work process. I'm more likely to talk about the business of publishing with them.

Despite what you hear about the publishing industry being a fixed game that you can only get in if you know somebody, I'm here in person to tell you it ain't so. If your stuff is really any good, sooner or later some editor will take a chance on you.

I believe I'm a better writer now than I was when I started. I'm grateful that I had good guidance because you don't make it in this business without good editors and a lot of support from your publishers.

It's a very nice kind of quasi-fame being a writer, because you remain largely anonymous and you can have a private life, which I really cherish. I don't like to be in the public light all that much. I don't crave the whole fame thing at all.