Luckily for you, you can close the book The Postman Always Rings Twice and break out of it, and James M. Cain can't. I can't think of any redeeming feature he has, but he's extremely compelling.
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.
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.
The Postman Always Rings Twice that's a book that I think every writer should read - that has to do with technique. But it's also a novel narrated by a guy who has decided by page 11 that he's fallen in love with a woman, and they're going to murder her husband so they can be together. There's nothing remotely likeable about him, but James M. Cain brings you so far into his head that, at a certain point, you have that uncomfortable but also thrilling sensation of seeing things exactly as he sees it.
But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.
I was mainly in a state of nervousness while I wrote it - nervousness that it was far bigger and more complicated than anything Id attempted before, and that maybe my talent just wasnt up to it and the book would have to be abandoned, or would turn out not to work at all when it was finished.
But you can try to read books at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons.
On Obamacare, every day that goes by I have more evidence that I wish I could put in my book, on how difficult it is for the Republicans to eliminate this law. They have no real alternative. They're afraid to take away health care from the 20 million people who now have it.
From my earliest memories I was fascinated by animals. I would explore my backyard for insects and gaze at anthills until my elbows became sore. When I was 8, my mother bought me a book of North American birds and I've been keen on birdwatching since.
For me, books have always been a way to feel less alone while being alone. Perhaps if I was depressed and isolated, just communicating with these authors through their sentences helped me.
I don't laugh that much, but I do like humorous books, and I like to entertain readers that way.
In fact, I have no hobbies. The only thing I like to do in life is to go to the Russian Baths in Manhattan. I also like to watch sports on TV, and I like to read books. So that's it - Russian Baths, sports, and books.
After my first novel, my mother said to me, 'Why don't you make your writing more funny? You're so funny in person.' Because my first novel was rather dark. And I don't know, but something about what she said was true. 'Yes, why don't I?' Maybe I was afraid to be funny in the writing. But since then, seven books later, almost everything I've done has a comedic edge to it.
I've always been inspired by Don Quixote as a role model of sorts, of the power of books to sort of make you insane in maybe a beautiful way.
Don't hold me to anything in the book. I'm a waffler. I like wafflers. They said John Kerry was a waffler, but I admired him for that - showed he could change his mind.
Even when I was living below the poverty line as a novelist, I was still living better than 99.5% of the human population of the world. But in my little, soft realm of trying to amuse a few dozen middle-class people with my books and articles, I did struggle to survive in my own way.
For me, books have always been a way to feel less alone while being alone.
I think our culture has gotten so skewed. People assume that because you're an actor you want to write a book to exploit your celebrity, but my celebrity is only a byproduct of me making movies. I have no intention of being a celebrity.
I couldn't imagine someone playing me or writing a book about who I am. Although I let people write articles and try and express who I am, and it blows up wildly in my face.
The premise of my book is that everyone is a bit ideological to some extent. Everyone comes from a ideological perspective.
There is, in my mind, no higher compliment to pay a non-fiction book than to say it reads like a novel.
Novelists may be able to seek advice from readers and editors, but in the end, it is up to them to get the book right.
I'm also interviewing a guy who's just written a book about his experience living in Iraq, faced with the type of violence as he said, an unimaginable scale. And I think that the combination of that is very hard to shake.
Do you know what writing a book is? It's sitting alone in a room for weeks without making contact with another human. I felt like Howard Hughes.
The Book of Mormon is so good it makes me f**king angry.
