All Novels Are Sequels; Influence Is Bliss.

I Don't Care What Is Written," Meyer Landsman Says. "i Don't Care What Supposedly Got Promised To Some Sandal-wearing Idiot Whose Claim To Fame Is That He Was Ready To Cut His Own Son's Throat For The Sake Of A Hare-brained Idea. I Don't Care About Red Heifers And Patriarchs And Locusts. A Bunch Of Old Bones In The Sand. My Homeland Is In My Hat. It's In My Ex-wife's Tote Bag.

There Was A Sort Of Irony In The Fact That These [superhero] Characters - Many Of Whom In That Period, The Golden Age, Had Been Evolved To Fight The Nazis - Were Themselves Very Much In The Nazi Ideal. The Idea That You Can Solve Problems Through Physical Strength, By Being Stronger And More Dominant And More Powerful - That Is Fascism. I Mean, That's It, That's The Essence Of Fascism. I Don't Think The Creators Of The Superheroes Or The Kids Who Were Reading Them At The Time Were The Slightest Bit Aware Of It.

All Literature, Highbrow Or Low, From The Aeneid Onward, Is Fan Fiction....through Parody And Pastiche, Allusion And Homage, Retelling And Reimagining The Stories That Were Told Before Us And That We Have Come Of Age Loving--amateurs--we Proceed, Seeking Out The Blank Places In The Map That Our Favorite Writers, In Their Greatness And Negligence, Have Left For Us, Hoping To Pass On To Our Own Readers--should We Be Lucky Enough To Find Any--some Of The Pleasure That We Ourselves Have Taken In The Stuff That We Love: To Get In On The Game. All Novels Are Sequels; Influence Is Bliss.

The Two Dozen Commonplace Childhood Photographs - Snowsuit, Pony, Tennis Racket, Looming Fender Of A Dodge - Were An Inexhaustible Source Of Wonder For Him, At Her Having Existed Before He Met Her, And Of Sadness For His Possessing Nothing Of The Ten Million Minutes Of That Black-and-white Scallop-edged Existence Save These Few Proofs.

For Me, The Goal Is Always To Write A Novel That I Myself Would Like To Read. People Frequently Ask Me What My Favorite Book Is, And In Effect, There's Always A Capital-f Favorite, Capital-b Book That I Would Like To Write Myself Someday. I Try To Go For That Ideal Of Writing The Best, Most Entertaining, Most Beautifully Written Book That I Possibly Can.