JAMES LASDUN

There is something uncannily adaptive about anti-Semitism: the way it can hide, unsuspected, in the most progressive minds.

I am not a supporter of Israel's military policy, let alone any kind of Zionist.

America as a setting seems inexhaustibly fascinating to me, and I think there's something about the outsider viewpoint that works for me. Being of Jewish descent in England always carried a vague sense of being foreign, while not being a practicing Jew made it hard to think of myself as fully Jewish either. So living here in a way just clarifies that terminal outsider position - makes it somehow official, which I like.

I consider myself a writer. I don't favour any type of writing. I sometimes wish short stories came more easily to me.

There are seldom more than a couple of students in any workshop who seem natural writers.

Writers tend to write stories as a kind of holiday between novels, or as preliminary steps towards a novel. Stories just don't often make up a writer's main body of work, and that's not because they don't see the market for it.

To me sympathy for a character has little to do with how morally upstanding or wicked they are. All that really matters for me is how human and interesting they are. I happen to be drawn to characters who operate under intense internal pressure, which often comes from some deep psychological conflict.

For a long period of history, you were what people said about you, and if your reputation was stained, you were in very serious trouble. People fought duels over this. Then it fades away historically.

I don't think I could, with a straight face, describe myself as a completely positive person, but I'm not overly negative, either. On the whole, most writers think plots through to their consequences, and it's not always a sunny place. I have an occupational temperament for anxiety.

What the Internet offers is this completely unfiltered transmission of thought to thought, of psyche to psyche, and whatever you're feeling, you can just sort of put it down and send it out there, and you can do it all in the confines of your room, without any actual contact.

There are seldom more than a couple of students in any workshop who seem natural writers.

I am not a supporter of Israel's military policy, let alone any kind of Zionist.

I don't think I could, with a straight face, describe myself as a completely positive person, but I'm not overly negative, either. On the whole, most writers think plots through to their consequences, and it's not always a sunny place. I have an occupational temperament for anxiety.

For a long period of history, you were what people said about you, and if your reputation was stained, you were in very serious trouble. People fought duels over this. Then it fades away historically.

What the Internet offers is this completely unfiltered transmission of thought to thought, of psyche to psyche, and whatever you're feeling, you can just sort of put it down and send it out there, and you can do it all in the confines of your room, without any actual contact.

I consider myself a writer. I don't favour any type of writing. I sometimes wish short stories came more easily to me.

There is something uncannily adaptive about anti-Semitism: the way it can hide, unsuspected, in the most progressive minds.

Writers tend to write stories as a kind of holiday between novels, or as preliminary steps towards a novel. Stories just don't often make up a writer's main body of work, and that's not because they don't see the market for it.

The short story seems like the best of all possible worlds. I do feel it is closer to writing poetry than to writing a novel, with its requirements of concentration and economy.

The nature of fiction is to make one distrustful of any character who lectures and castigates.

I got into online trading. It was alarmingly easy to do. I went through the whole cycle of emotions, from supreme self-confidence to total impotence. I broke even in the end.

To me sympathy for a character has little to do with how morally upstanding or wicked they are. All that really matters for me is how human and interesting they are. I happen to be drawn to characters who operate under intense internal pressure, which often comes from some deep psychological conflict.

America as a setting seems inexhaustibly fascinating to me, and I think there's something about the outsider viewpoint that works for me. Being of Jewish descent in England always carried a vague sense of being foreign, while not being a practicing Jew made it hard to think of myself as fully Jewish either. So living here in a way just clarifies that terminal outsider position - makes it somehow official, which I like.

Maybe I'm perverse, but the question of "rooting" for a character, or setting out to write a character for whom other people will root, has never had anything to do with why I read or write fiction. As long as the writing and story remain alive, intense, invigorating, provoking, the characters can be as demonic or saintly as the author wants.