Daniel Woodrell

There's an overlap between social-realist fiction and crime fiction - a sweet spot there. ”

I always loved the verve and vivacity of pulp and I kind of merged it with my own interest in family stories. ”

I was basically raised to look for chances to get even with several families for stuff that happened 30 or 40 years before I was born. ”

I know people who have, until recently, lived with dirt floors. There are people who live way back off the grid, without electricity. Not a whole lot, but quite a few. That's a choice for a lot of them. There might be a religious element in their isolation, at least with some of them. ”

If you don't allow yourself to change from book to book - take chances - it turns into a dullish job with no health benefits or pension plan and only intermittent paychecks. ”

I'm surviving and developing as a writer. I don't know what brings you to mass attention in terms of sales. But I've gotten more and more comfortable with it. Of course if that changes, I'll be comfortable with that. All I can do is write the best books I can. ”

For a long time, I didn't think I wanted to live in the Ozarks or write about the region. It seemed to be a sure recipe for obscurity, and to be obscure was not my conscious ambition. ”

This happens to me all the time: I think I'm working on one thing, but this other thing, whether I want it to or not, keeps coming through. ”

I tell the story by feel most of the time, and I am not much given to labyrinthian digressions but seem to be naturally drawn to compression and pace, and the feelings come about on their own. ”

There are people so alienated from the mainstream of American culture that it's like a parallel universe. They don't expect anything but trouble from the square world. Every time they interact with that world, they're given a ticket, sent to jail, drafted. It's never good. So they live by a separate value system. ”