'Scar Tissue' is the only book I've ever written when I've felt completely toxic, ill.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
Scars show toughness: that you've been through it, and you're still standing.
Any book that can help you survive the slings and arrows of adolescence is a book to love for life; 'The Catcher in the Rye' did just that, and I still do love it.
I've written books as acts of discovery: things I need to know and that I need to touch. And it's very dangerous work to deal with the most toxic internal elements... I feel like Madame Curie at my computer. I feel like I should be hemorrhaging from my eyes and ears.
The only book worth writing is the book that threatens to kill you.
I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.
A novel is like a gland pill - it nips off the cream of my hysterics and gets them running on track in a book where they belong instead of rioting all over my person.
I was attacked by a dog when I was a toddler, and my injuries were so bad, I spent quite a bit of my childhood in and out of hospital. Books were absolutely my salvation during those years.
I have survived by representing these sufferings of mine in the form of the novel.
All of my books come from pain.