You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend. You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer. You can't say, "I'm too busy writing to be political." You are one person. You are the same person in every aspect of your life, and you have to be a responsible person in every aspect of your life.
We are taught to be suspicious, especially of anyone who might not look like us or share our beliefs.
I don't want to stand with somebody's praise. Whereas now when people come up to me, they say, "I love the bookstore" and "Kids! Come here, come here! This is the woman who owns the bookstore." That's incredible. I can say to that, "Thank you for shopping local. Thank you for coming in. What are you reading? Let's talk about books." It's about something I'm doing as opposed to somehow something I am. I feel comfortable and positive in that role. Because it's about reading. It's about books. It's about learning. It's about business and tax base.
My novels are very much the same, as I think many people's novels are. No matter how hard I try to do otherwise, the books always wind up being "a group of strangers are thrown together by circumstance and form a society."
Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.
That's one of the many things about having the bookstore that I adore. I can walk into the store and say to somebody, "I'm glad you're reading this book" or "I'm glad you're getting this book" or "Don't get that book. I read that book and hated that book. Let's get you this book instead."
This is my job, my livelihood: the health and the well-being of the publishing industry. We're all responsible for this.
If what we want to do is promote reading and writing and publishing and making sure this is a business that keeps going - because it is a business! It's not just an art - then we have to take responsibility. I get sort of crazy and frothy when I think about this. It really matters.
I read books I hate all the time, and I don't mention them or talk about them.
People always say, "Can writing be taught?" I always think, I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to do dialogue, how to do character, but I can't teach you how to be a decent person, and I can't teach you how to have something to say.
That's important to me, to recommend books.
You are the same person in every aspect of your life, and you have to be a responsible person in every aspect of your life.
You can't say, "I'm too busy writing to be political." You are one person.
You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer.
If I had problems, I kept them to myself. I didn't make a scene.
You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend.
I was always on time, I did my work to exact specifications, I spoke when spoken to.
You should not have assault rifles in your home.
When I am emperor, I will abolish private education. Private schools, private college. All of these parents with money and energy and the drive for bake sales and a desire to leave their vast fortunes to education - everybody would have to be eating out of the same educational pot.
I know that there are people out there who believe we should get rid of all guns.
I don't want to stand with somebody's praise.
If anybody had shown me the paperwork for how my life was going to look in five years, I would have said, "No. That is not where I want to go."
I will go and speak at rotary clubs. I will go and speak at schools. I'm so much in the community, but in a way that I love. It's been such a positive thing.
I used to do everything to keep a wall up around myself and keep my life quiet so that I could write.
I am a totally public person.
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