In life we often look to others for simple, but difficult answers, despite the fact that we have those answers ourselves.
My life has been like all the lives, long and hard and full of sadness and confusion and horror, a frightening, difficult dream punctuated by brief moments of joy. And as is the case with all people's lives, the moments of joy are never often enough and never long enough.
Trauma is survivable, but often not much more. It kills you while allowing you to still live.
There's something, I think, that gets lost when we write something - something gets lost in the translation. So I speak everything out, and it's more important how it sounds. And applying that to more formal aspects of writing.
I regretted making a comment about Dave Eggers. I’ve never said anything about McSweeneys except that I admire what it is, and I think it’s great that they keep people interested in literature.
I always wanted to write a book about LA, a big ambitious book. Nobody had ever really done it with LA- treating the city seriously as a major economic and cultural power, as the embodiment of 21st century America.
I just think it's a great world to tell stories in, to tell cool stories: money, sex, fame, and scandal. Those are great subject matters to work with.
What someone calls my books is irrelevant to me. I consider them works of art and rules and categories and labels mean nothing.
Dreams can come true there [Los Angeles]in ways impossible anywhere else, and they can get destroyed as well.
L.A is a huge place, literally and metaphorically. Its beauty and horror. Its unconventional history. Its draw and allure. Its diversity and segregation.
Coming after all the bullshit related to A Million Little Pieces, nobody was expecting anything from me. No publisher, no agent, no one. Just me and the book. It was great.
I love the process of being alone in a room.
Love is love. It doesn't matter how or who you love. I don't believe the messiah would condemn gay men and women.
We know have the power of God in many ways: the atomic bomb, the ability to create life in a test tube, cloning, artificial intelligence.
I'm writing books. They're still a mix of fact and fiction and will continue to be. I think it's an interesting place to work.
The best stories are universal stories that have been told for as long as humanity has existed it's just figuring out new ways to do it, with language, with structure. And so I'm always trying to do that.
I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing things and not allowing things outside of myself to distract me or bother me or affect me in any way.
Writing's not precious to me. It's not a thing that requires specific environment. You know, it's my job. Just like anybody with a job, you have to do your job when you don't feel like it, regardless of how good or bad the conditions are, regardless of how good or bad you might feel on any particular day.
I try to make the voice in my head come out onto the page. I try to make it much more conversational than other writing. I speak everything, so if something sounds right I write it. It's more about sound and the rhythm of speech than written language.
To say that you can't see echoes of the past in what I do would be absurd. Everything that has preceded me has affected me.
I don't write with an outline. I don't often know what I'm going to do as I'm writing. And I do everything by feel and by instinct.
I think, living in America, we're so bombarded with God all the time that in certain ways I'm making statements against that bombardment, you know? I think it's crazy. I mean, I don't believe in God. I don't believe in anything. But I still think about it. And I still write about it.
One of the beautiful and terrible things about America is you can go there and still be whatever you want, if you bust your ass and you have some luck.
The way America works, and the way L.A. works, is a very small percentage of people get what they want out of life, and a much greater percentage try very very hard and they don't. That's just the way it is.
I try to write books that are different from the books I've already written. I think one of the thing I really try to do is reinvent how a novel can be written.
