Mortality means you don't have forever to work things out. You can live your life unexamined but then on the last day you're going to think: 'I've left things a little late.'
I was a workaholic. I never stopped. I lived in fifth gear. I bought cars. I invested in stocks. I made more money than I had ever imagined.
This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun.
We all have two things in common, no matter who we are: We were born and we are going to die.
Nobody's favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody's favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books?
Critics have a problem with sentimentality. Readers do not. I write for readers.
For better or for worse, I've watched people die in front of me. I see how they are in the end. And they're not cynical. In the end, they wanna hold somebody's hand. And that's real to me.
If you are fully alive to the prospect of dying, you really start reprioritising your life.
I would lying if I said I would laugh in the face of death.
I had a very high-grade publisher tell me I was incapable of writing a memoir.
People who don't normally read make an exception for my books, possibly because they're short.
Sentiment is wherever you go.
I seem to have very few casual readers, only passionate and appreciative ones.
Got an hour or two? That's all it takes for one of my books.
Whenever you have two characters in a book, whether it's a novel or nonfiction, you run the risk that the reader is going to like one more than the other. They're going to read one chapter and say, 'I can't wait to get back to the other guy.'
For as spiritual as some people think my books are, I've never really dealt with religious things.
I find interesting characters or lessons that resonate with people and sometimes I write about them in the sports pages, sometimes I write them in a column, sometimes in a novel, sometimes a play or sometimes in nonfiction. But at the core I always say to myself, 'Is there a story here? Is this something people want to read?'
