A Quote by Sebastian Faulks
What I like in novels that I read and enjoy is interplay of theme: the mystery of how we seem to be so separate as human beings.
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Good sex is a mystery. Perhaps humping and pumping is not a mystery, but good sex is a mystery, and how human beings become truly intimate remains a mystery.
There are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not perfect. All of the motives a human being may have, which are mixed, that's the novelists' materials. That's where they have to go. And a lot of that just isn't pretty. We like to think of ourselves as really, really good people. But look in the mirror. Really look. Look at your own mixed motives. And then multiply that.
People lose it when I say this, but I'm a novelist who doesn't read novels. There are lots of good reasons for not reading novels! I'm also a game writer who doesn't play games - I keep everything very separate. The only crossover with me is comics. I write them, and I read them passionately.
I read novels for entertainment rather than for edification, so I tend not to read the sort of novels that are said to illuminate the human condition.
It's not that I don't enjoy a good mystery that comes and goes in a hour. I do, but God, 'Breaking Bad' and 'Saul' unfold like novels.
There is no limit to suffering human beings have been willing to inflict on others, no matter how innocent, no matter how young, and no matter how old. This fact must lead all reasonable human beings, that is, all human beings who take evidence seriously, to draw only one possible conclusion: Human nature is not basically good.
Human beings are like detectives. They love a mystery. They love going where the mystery pulls them. What we don't like is a mystery that's solved completely. It's a letdown. It always seems less than what we imagined when the mystery was present. The last scene in `Blow Up' is so perfect because you leave the theater still dreaming. Or the end of `Chinatown,' where the guy says `Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown.' It explains so much but it only gives you a dream of a bigger mystery. Like life. For me, I want to solve certain things but leave some room to dream.
I read all types of books. I read Christian books, I read black novels, I read religious books. I read stuff like 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' and 'The Dictator's Handbook' and then I turned around and read science-fiction novels.
I keep thinking I'll enjoy suspense novels, and sometimes I do. I've read about 20 Dick Francis novels.
Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.
Novels, like human beings, usually have their beginnings in the dark.
How certain human beings are able to create works of art is a mystery, and why they should wish to do so, at a great cost to themselves usually, is another mystery. Works are not created by one's life; every life is rich in material.
I don't read books. I like to read newspapers and magazines, but I've never learnt to enjoy books or novels.
Vonnegut's earliest novels hint strongly at his familiarity with Wiener's work, The Human Use of Human Beings, especially his first novel, Player Piano (1952), which shows his concern for the social implications of automation, the replacement of human beings with machines.
It's easy to sell good news like this, and the authors confidently rely on classic fallacious arguments. They argue by declaration, which is what makes the books so amusing. In matter-of-fact, authoritative tones, the authors tell us how plants and human beings exchange energy - or they describe what angels look like, whether or how they're sexed, how they communicate with human beings, and how they differ from ghosts. Readers might be expected to wonder, How do they know?
If you read novels of the 19th century, they're pretty experimental. They take lots of chances; they seem to break a lot of rules. You've got omniscient narrators lecturing at times to the reader in first person. If you go back to the earliest novels, this is happening to a wild extent, like 'Tristram Shandy' or 'Don Quixote'.
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