Back when I was young, lists seemed like fences on the open range. But secretly, I was pleased to be corralled among other literary thoroughbreds.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I went to a performing arts high school, we learned Shakespeare, I did 'Fences.' When you train, you can do anything.
I loved horses and horse books as a child.
'Misty of Chincoteague', 'The Black Stallion', the 'Saddle Club' books, I read 'em all. I was horse-crazy.
I remember the absolute joy I used to get out of writing. The purity of imagining something and then putting it down on paper - it was such a pleasure. I read whatever I could get my hands on, from 'Great Expectations' to 'The Thorn Birds.'
In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.
When I was 14 or 15, our teacher introduced us to Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities.' It was just for entertainment - we read it aloud - and all of a sudden it became a treasure.
I would say that 'Schindler's List,' as powerful as it was, seemed to have continued with a particular iconography of victimization and passivity. That was the iconography with which I had grown up and to which I had grown accustomed.
Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison.
There aren't any fences to the imagination, and so there shouldn't be any for books.
I love making lists.