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New York is ultimately not the synthesis but merely the sum of its unfathomable subjectivities, its personal histories, its uncategorisable figures.
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The first draft often is really fast, and I'd be terribly ashamed if anybody ever saw it.
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I seem to have a talent for writing endings that seem just right to me but that frustrate other people.
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You never want to have to give your child bad news of any kind.
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More than periods where I don't write anything, I have periods where I just write junk and I know I'm writing junk but I can't stop.
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I worry that's what people are going to think about me if they kind of go backwards. But if that didn't happen to you, I'll feel better.
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I think that good storytelling of any kind does promote a humility in that it encourages you to see the world the way that other people see it.
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I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.
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You should not really entertaining anyone else, but trying to be yourself, because there are already more good books than you or I could ever read in our lifetime.
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Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.
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That's a long way of saying no, I'm always too bound up in thinking about the characters in whatever I'm working on and trying to make good to dwell on characters from previous books.