Garth Risk Hallberg

I'd been coming to New York for weekends since I was 17, and after 9/11, I started making these trips more frequently, just to make contact with the city. ”

Reading isn't about managing expectations. In certain ways, writing is. You're trying to send signals early in a book about what might be coming later, but I think worrying about the kind of chatter around a book is something I try and stay as far away from when I'm reading. ”

I'm trying to focus on my job as I see it, which is to write the next thing and to remain, to the degree that I ever was, a noticer. ”

I remember reading 'The Hobbit' on a car trip from Ohio to Mississippi and getting out at a rest-stop in Mississippi and feeling jet-lagged at my return from Middle-earth. ”

Narnia, Middle-earth and New York were my three fantasy universes when I was a kid. ”

The ego being shattered is not what frightens me - that can be useful for writing - but the ego being inflated is sort of like it dying of gout. ”

Reading was not just an escape or a Band-Aid; it was a deep form of feeling seen and recognized, and being able to see and recognize other kindred spirits. My dad was a writer, too, which also likely had something to do with that. ”

When I get online, there's this cycle of anxiety and narcissism that takes over, which is the part of me that I like the least. ”

I fell in love with New York at some indeterminate point in my early years. ”

The writing that feels the best to me, I experience sometimes, is a kind of weirdly deep listening - like, it feels like if you just listen hard enough, the next sentence will tell you what it needs to be. ”