O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.
The characters in my novels, from the very first one, are always on some quixotic effort of attempting to control something that is uncontrollable - some element of the world that is essentially random and out of control.
Because who can describe that look that triggers the memory of loved ones? Who can anticipate the frown, the smile, or the misplaced lock of hair that sends a swift, undeniable signal from the past? Who can ever estimate the power of association, which is always strongest in moments of love and in memories of death?
When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.
In an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel, which is flash back and flash forward in the same instant, in the same scene, in the same voice.
I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.
For most of my life, when I've finished the book I'm writing, there've always been as many as two or three other novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had.
It is much easier to be flexible about where a story begins than it ever was for me to change my mind about where and how a story ended.
I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing.
The ability to see the future can be a burden, and the younger you are and the more isolated you feel, maybe the more of a burden it is.
I've always been slow but I'm even slower now. I'm more into the waiting, or I guess I'm more patient about the waiting.
I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.
What was even more germane was my study of the history of religion. It was one of the few things in school I was fascinated by.
If you feel so strongly about what's on television, don't have one.
I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.
Before I began The Cider House Rules, I thought I wanted to write about a father-son relationship that was closer, more conflicted, and ultimately more loving, than most. Then I began to think of a relationship between an old orphanage director and an unadoptable orphan - a kid who goes out into the world and fails and keeps coming back, so that the old guy ends up with someone he's got to keep.
We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it - and reward it in all manner of ways.
I was brought up in a community, in a family that valued such things as good manners, and I still do.
I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
It seems to me that a great deal of this type of censorship has to do with absolving parents of responsibility - parents who just plop their kids in front of the television and leave them there hour upon hour.
If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.
I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful.
If you asked me one day, I might say, "Well, sometimes I feel a little bit religious." If you asked me another day, I'd just say flat out, "No."
Ted Seabrooke, my wrestling coach, had a kind of Nietzschean effect on me in terms of not just his estimation of my limited abilities, but his decidedly philosophical stance about how to conduct your life, what you should do to compensate for your limitations. This was essential to me, both as a student - and not a good one - and as a wrestler who was not a natural athlete but who had found something he loved.
