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[...] This goes very much against the present collaborative trend. I think a page that sings, that lives in us, is a wildly autistic act; it's mad to do it at all. It's mad to think you might have something new to say, for God's sake, about the Old Testament. How many books are there on it already?…

Yes, I'm fascinated by the actual material techne of writing. I'm a morning creature. All my best work tends to be done in the morning, especially the early morning, when somehow my mind and sensibility operate much more efficiently. I read and take notes in the afternoon, then sketch the writing I…

Eastern Europe and Latin America, I think, almost without doubt. Great writing, great thinking, flourishes under pressure. Thinking is a lonely, cancerous, autistic, mad business: to be able to concentrate deeply, innerly. Very few people know how to think; real focused thinking is about the most d…

This is a very peculiar form of heresy. It's a form of Manichaeanism. And I call myself a Manichaean, a rather baffled Manichaean

his words cut through me at that time: the authority of that man, the charisma, the apodictic contempt in that statement. So I accepted.