I am about art here, not simple reproduction.

If you can think of times in your life that you've treated people with extraordinary decency and love, with pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it's probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we're here for is to learn how to do it. I know that sounds a little pious.

This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.

I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.

You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous. Because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in...it's actually kind of tragic because you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is. And there were a couple of years where I really struggled with that.

Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies.