Sunday, August 28, 2011

Book that changed your life:

Tom Robbins's Jitterbug Perfume. I read it maybe 20 times aged 15-17, and it showed me how prose could be, of all things, playful and fun and warm and cheeky. It's been very influential for all my rule-breaking. But I haven't actually read it since! I couldn't bear that my adult self judge it with cynical eyes, so I leave it forever back then, where it belongs and is beloved.

Favorite line from a book:

Easy--the final line of Toni Morrison's Sula, where she realizes what the loss of her friend has cost her and what the grief feels like: "It had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow." I'd give my arm to write a line that good.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Middlemarch. But then, every time with Middlemarch feels like the first time.

from an interview with Patrick Ness

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