A Quote by Philip Roth
What I would really love to happen to me would be if I came upon an idea that would keep me busy until I die so I wouldn't have to go through the business of thinking up a new book. But I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.
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I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.
If you're a comic book fan, you know that any epic book, you would open it up - as a kid, I would just go through and look at who was fighting who. I'd stand there in the store for 15 minutes until the guy told me to buy the book or get out.
When I was a kid my primary goal in life was to find a book that was alive. Not alive in the human sense, but like a thing that would send me to a place not otherwise accessible on Earth. This book should have hidden words encrypted beneath the printed ones, so that if I worked hard enough and discovered the code I would somehow end up inside the book, or the book would take on a body and consume me, revealing a secret set of rooms behind the wall in my bedroom, for instance, inside which anything could be.
Hands down, the hardest part for me is coming up with an idea. I spend about 14 months writing a book, and that's a lot of hours spent thinking about a single project. I simply have to love the idea. I'll go through dozens of workable ideas until I find the one that lights my fire.
I think that the Holy Spirit works through the pastors of the church. It helps me avoid the trap of writing to the reading market. It helps me stay a pastor first, because they have no agenda; they are not thinking: "This would this be a good book someday." They're thinking: "How this will help Bob and Suzy who are going through a tough marriage? What series can encourage them?" And so I really bow to their preference.
I'm still happy with the way Einstein's Dreams came out. That book came out of a single inspiration. I really felt like I was not creating the words, that I was hearing the words. That someone else was speaking the words to me and I was just writing them down. It was a very strange experience. That can happen with a short book. I don't think it could happen with a long book.
Life and love would go on. Even though it would happen without me, the idea brought me joy.
When I was 35 I realized that I was still thinking a lot about what it would be like to go to Narnia. To really go - not just in a daydream, or in a children's book, but what it would actually feel like, physically, psychologically, every other way. The idea was haunting me.
Question four: What book would you give to every child? Answer: I wouldn't give them a book. Books are part of the problem: this strange belief that a tree has nothing to say until it is murdered, its flesh pulped, and then (human) people stain this flesh with words. I would take children outside and put them face to face with chipmunks, dragonflies, tadpoles, hummingbirds, stones, rivers, trees, crawdads. That said, if you're going to force me to give them a book, it would be The Wind In The Willows, which I hope would remind them to go outside.
Reading a book, for me at least, is like traveling in someone else's world. If it's a good book, then you feel comfortable and yet anxious to see what's going to happen to you there, what'll be around the next corner. But if it's a lousy book, then it's like going through Secaucus, New Jersey -- it smells and you wish you weren't there, but since you've started the trip, you roll up the windows and breathe through your mouth until you're done.
My parents would frisk me before family events, and find the book, and lock it in the car. And then be disappointed where, somewhere at the event, I would find a book and sit under a table where nobody could get me and go back into book land.
I think I sent one [book] to Brian Eno. I don't know how I got to know his address, but I sent one to him. He called me up and he said, "I really like the book, and I'm starting a new label, would you liked to do something?" It was a tricky situation for me, because I've always had this thing in my life of a tension between collaboration, which was extremely important to me, and then being alone. Make of that what you will!
My goal would be to find a big, fat subject that would occupy me to the end of my life, and when I finish it, I'll die. What's agony is starting; I hate starting them. I just want to keep writing now and end when it ends.
I was very naive, and I thought it was just a matter of writing my first book and sending it in, and for the rest of my life I would be writing books and collecting royalties. Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published.
I was sitting at home and had a profound experience. I experienced, in all of my Being, that someday I was going to die, and it wouldn't be like it had been happening, almost dying but somehow staying alive, but I would just die! And two things would happen right before I died: I would regret my entire life; I would want to live it over again. This terrified me. The thought that I would live my entire life, look at it and realize I blew it forced me to do something with my life.
I would love to do a musical. I would love that. I would have to find the right book, the right story, but some day I'm going to make one. I would really like to go off and direct a musical. That's what I would really like to do when I grow up.
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