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November 19, 2017

From The New York Times (Andy Weir on "Who is your favorite novelist of all time?"):
I grew up reading my father’s science-fiction collection, a huge collection of those pulpy mass-market paperbacks from the ’50s and ’60s. Making my way through the Holy Trinity of Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke was what made me fall in love with science fiction, and to some extent that experience has shaped my life ever since. So I’d have to pick one of them.

From Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle:
Strangely enough, the journey back always seemed much faster than the journey there.

From The TLS (Jesmyn Ward on "If you could make a change to anything you’ve written over the years, what would it be?"):
In my first novel, Where the Line Bleeds, I was too kind to my characters – I wanted to spare them the pain I saw around me, I didn’t want them to hurt. But I’ve come to understand that the world doesn’t spare people like those that I write about, and I want my fiction to accurately reflect that reality.

From The Economist:
Over the past decade global e-commerce has been expanding at an average rate of 20% a year as bricks-and-mortar shops have languished.

From The Guardian (Tessa Hadley on "The book that changed my life"):
If I named one book, it would have to be DH Lawrence’s The Rainbow. When I was young, I saw everything through Lawrence’s way of seeing. I made crazy life choices, narrating them to myself in his language. This was rash and has its funny side. But I don’t regret it, because Lawrence is a life force, not a life-stifler.
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