I Wake Up Every Day In Order

After I Left College I Thought, Very Naively, That Either You Became Someone Interesting - An Artist - Or You Went Into Academia. If You Ended Up In An Office You Were Dull And Lacking. And I Ended Up In An Office.

If You Can Get By With Quotes From The Godfather And Nothing You Say Matters, That's Pretty Bleak, Don't You Think? Don't We Want What We Say To Matter?

Names Generate Meaning In A Short Amount Of Space — They Provoke Thoughts, Questions. That's Something I Like Doing. Of Course, You Have To Be Careful. Sometimes It Can Alienate The Reader, It Can Be Another Level Of Mediation, To Make A Character Carry The Great Burden Of A Metaphoric Name. The Character Can Be A Device Before He Or She Becomes A Person, And That Can Be A Bad Thing For A Writer Who Wants To Offer Up A Kind Of Emotional Proximity In The Work. It's A Constant Struggle, The Desire To Be Playful And The Desire To Communicate On Some Very Stark Emotional Level.

I Think One Of The Ways You Avoid Being Angry Is To Avoid Being Angry At The People In Power. They Might Do Crappy Things, And Piss You Off, And Make Bad Decisions, But They Shouldn't Be Hated Simply Because They're In Power. And I Thought It Was Important To Humanize Them If The Book Was Going To Be Even-handed To All The Different Ways You Encounter People At Work.

We Suffered Failures Of Imagination Just Like Everyone Else, Our Daring Was Wanting, And Our Daily Contentment Too Nearly Adequate For Us To Give It Up.