I've immersed myself in reading more and more of American literature, but no editor has asked me to comment on Jonathan Franzen or Jennifer Egan. It is assumed I'm an expert on writers who need a little less suntan lotion at the beach.
I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.
I first picked up a violin aged five - I just assumed everyone played.
We just assumed that Walter Cronkite was unbiased. In hindsight, it is clear that Walter Cronkite was biased and that he used feigned objectivity as the cudgel to change the American narrative from being a right of center one to being a left of center one.
A great hope gets crushed every time someone reminds us that happiness can be neither assumed nor earned; that we are all prisoners of our own flawed brains; that the ultimate aloneness in each of us is, finally, inviolable.
I would say that I have an aspect of my personality which is that I have no personality. That's why I work as an agent. I have the assumed personality of the people I represent. I am like a sponge.
I'm sorry to say this, but Putin is spreading lies. He is doing this with the goal of removing Stalin's Russia responsibility for starting the war jointly with Nazi Germany. I assumed he is ashamed of that.
That's what makes me insufferable to be around, is that most of my life I have assumed that everyone wants to see me perform and do things all the time.
Conservatives spent an awful long time ignoring things: the birthers, the bigots, the xenophobes, the alternative-reality media. We had assumed that they were postcards from the fringe.
I was inspired to become an actor from theater I'd seen, so I assumed I'd do a lot of theater. But when I left Guidhall, the first thing I did was a short film - I played the main character. And I loved it. I love working on camera. I love the smallness of it and the detail and the routine of it.
