Multicolored Penguins and Socks

"A writer’s personality is his manner of being in the world: his writing style is the unavoidable trace of that manner. When you understand style in these terms, you don’t think of it as merely a matter of fanciful syntax, or as the flamboyant icing atop a plain literary cake, nor as the uncontrollable result of some mysterious velocity coiled within language itself. Rather, you see style as a personal necessity, as the only possible expression of a particular human consciousness. Style is a writer’s way of telling the truth. Literary success or failure, by this measure, depends not only on the refinement of words on a page, but in the refinement of a consciousness, what Aristotle called the education of the emotions."

"I read persistently. I swam in books as a child and at some point it becomes quite ruinous. It gets to the point where you can’t answer the door without being heavily analytical about it. But ultimately I think they’ve proved to be positive weapons for me."