When I wrote 'The Interestings,' I wanted to let time unspool, to give the book the feeling of time passing. I had to allow myself the freedom to move back and forth in time freely, and to trust that readers would accept this.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My first popular book, 'A Brief History of Time,' aroused a great deal of interest, but many found it difficult to understand.
A lot of the time writers are just sponges... for what's around them, and so books are helpful for focusing your mind and literally putting it into words.
Books, I found, had the power to make time stand still, retreat or fly into the future.
There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn't bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.
I was encouraged to be imaginative and read, and it was a great childhood for a budding writer because I had the time and the freedom to go into a world of my own.
Books are time machines, transporting us out of our own lives into other times and other places.
Don't time travel into the past, roaming through the nuances as if they can change. Don't bookmark pages you've already read.
One of the reasons why I don't write the same kind of book again and again is that I get bored very easily, so I like to make things interesting for myself.
There's a practical problem about time and energy, and a more subtle problem of what it does to a writer's head, to continually analyze why they write, where it all comes from, where it's going to.
I feel like I don't understand time in novels, really. I bumble forward, is all.