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A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the w

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Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.

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Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay

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Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.

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A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.", Frankfurt Book Fair, October 12, 2003]

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Perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme order are those who could do something to alleviate it - say, th...more

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My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am.

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If I thought that what I'm doing when I write is expressing myself, I'd junk the typewriter. Writing is a much more complicated activity that that.

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My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything.

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Writing is a mysterious activity.

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The writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one--or both. Usually both.

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Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book. No book is worth reading that isn't worth re-reading.

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For the modern consciousness, the artist (replacing the saint) is the exemplary sufferer. And among artists, the writer, the man of words, is the pers...more

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Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom. Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of ...more

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Most of my reading is rereading.