Paul Will
Paul Will
literary robust seem serious struck
Japan, Germany, and India seem to me to have serious writers, readers, and book buyers, but the Netherlands has struck me as the most robust literary culture in the world.
country friendly perfect problems
Nyasaland was the perfect country for a volunteer. It was friendly and destitute; it was small and out-of-the-way. It had all of Africa's problems - poverty, ignorance, disease.
breakfast discover hoping life morning pleasant setting spent waking worth
I have spent my life on the road waking in a pleasant, or not so pleasant hotel, and setting off every morning after breakfast hoping to discover something new and repeatable, something worth writing about.
impulse mental people physical travel understand
The travel impulse is mental and physical curiosity. It's a passion. And I can't understand people who don't want to travel.
awakens danger fears life living problem solve
A journey awakens all our old fears of danger and risk. Your life is on the line. You are living by your own resources; you have to find your own way and solve every problem on the road.
far job travel truth
The job of the travel writer is to go far and wide, to make voluminous notes, to tell the truth.
far hours ideal middle straight
If you look at a map, you see that Hawaii is in the middle of nowhere. It's 17 hours of straight flying from London. It's very far away, and sometimes you feel as if you're on another planet. But I like that. Also, that's ideal for writing.
elbow great ice maine nights plenty season
Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals.
cover deliver desire experience impulse life perhaps share truth
The impulse to write comes, I think, from a desire - perhaps a need - to give imaginative life to experience, to share it with the reader, not to cover up the truth but to deliver it obliquely.
downs invisible job kids life outside ups
My father had an invisible job outside of the house; I didn't know what he did. But my kids were privy to the ups and downs of a writer's life.
chances denies gives life
Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us.
certainly copying seemed type
Movable type seemed magical to the monks who were illuminating manuscripts and copying texts. Certainly e-books seem magical to me.
artie became came choosing deal great partly studio time tracks
When we came into the studio I became more and more me, making the tracks and choosing the musicians, partly because a great deal of the time during Bridge, Artie wasn't there.
american-musician
It's a big error to think that because you like somebody's work, you're going to like him.