I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.

The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.

I am about art here, not simple reproduction.

The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.

If you can think of times in your life that you've treated people with extraordinary decency and love, with pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it's probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we're here for is to learn how to do it. I know that sounds a little pious.

We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life 'outside' the story changes the story.