I resented the idea of being talented. I couldn’t respect it — in my experience, no one else did. Being called talented at school had only made me a target for resentment. I wanted to work. Work, I could honor. ↗
The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not there physically at all. It is an illusion, a piece of magic, so that what you see is not what you see. ↗
At one level you're condemned to the voice you have. But within those confines, you have a certain amount of freedom to range among your possible voices. ↗
When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars. ↗
As my mom says, I was a little bit of a slacker in high school. I really was just kind of unmotivated, a little bit lazy, so my grades weren't that good. ↗
I am the son of a small and far-away nation and the other laureates have all come from different countries from all over the world and we all were equally received here with signs of sympathy. ↗
