Rick Moody

“Writing the book was itself a process of concealing and revealing.”

“My grandfather was a newspaper publisher and his paper had all the comics in NYC, so some of my earliest memories are of reading the family paper and heading straight for the comics insert.”

“Literature precedes genre.”

“What genre it falls under is only of interest later.”

“My idea of literature, as I have often said, is that it should save lives. My idea of literature is that it once did save lives, and was of consequence in that way. I believe it can do so again. With every book, to the best of my ability, I try to put this belief in action, even if, as in some of the recent books, the best way to save lives is to cause laughter. Bring on your problems, and I will listen, and bear witness, and when the occasion permits, I will respond, according to certain general rules, on this page, in this hope that here too words may be redemptive.”

“The thing you did to alleviate the loneliness was to take off your clothes and touch someone, even if you didn’t really know the person well.”

“There should be a sex-related metric with which you could measure sex in hotels, especially the illicit variety, but of what would that metric consist? How about increments of remorse?”

“Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.”

“My contention is that that style is just as stylized as an ornate style.”

“The Ice Storm, because of the movie, has had, or is to have, a vigorous life in other cultures.”

“This is odd, but there are certain things that are really embarrassing to talk about - one is my job and the success that I've had in it, and the other is money.”

“I love comic books and always did as a kid.”

“When prose gets too stylized and out of control - and Stein is sometimes a good example - when you don't know what the hell is going on, then it's kind of boring.”

“The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality.”

“I made this list of stuff that it's time for me to try to do.”

“I turned forty, and I'm finally going to get married and maybe have a kid.”

“I have worked really hard to defy categorization, to break down a taxonomy whenever it comes my way.”

“But that incessant drive to be out there in the literary universe that was important to me when I was in my twenties, like going to a Paris Review party or whatever, that seems totally irrelevant now.”

“Maybe when I'm sixty-five I'll talk about my literary life.”

“It's also true, however, that having conquered the regional writer ghetto, I am now intent on conquering the nationalist writer ghetto and moving out into the world more.”