Well, in fact everybody - everybody - in the entire nation has enough stuff in their life to write about that's interesting that they could write their autobiography. And in the end that's why I find people interesting.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Most people write a lot of autobiography, but when I came to write autobiography I discovered that nothing interesting had ever happened to me. So I had to take the situation and invent stories to go with it.
I see myself as writing biographies, the complete story of someone's life.
There are a few writers whose lives and personalities are so large, so fascinating, that there's no such thing as a boring biography of them - you can read every new one that comes along, good or bad, and be caught up in the story all over again.
I think a biography is only as interesting as the lives and times it illuminates.
I think anything that anyone writes that's any good is going to have a lot of autobiography.
I come from a working-class family. They're the people I know and the people I love, I guess. I do not write about them for political reasons, but because, as I see it, most interesting things - social, political, emotional - take place there. It's a bottomless well for an author like me.
Writers do draw inspiration from their own lives, which, quite frankly, might be more interesting than fiction.
Why do we read biography? Why do we choose to write it? Because we are human beings, programmed to be curious about other human beings, and to experience something of their lives. This has always been so - look at the Bible, crammed with biographies, very popular reading.
There's actually nothing interesting about me except what I write.
Writers shouldn't have lives that are interesting. It gets in the way of your work.