Quotes #404 -406
“Basically, I agree writing novels is an unhealthy type of work. When we set off write a novel, when we use writing to create a story, like it or not a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it, because otherwise no creative activity in the real sense can take place. (Please excuse the strange analogy: with a fugu fish, the tastiest part is the portion near the poison - this might be something similar to what I'm getting at.) No matter how you spin it, this isn't a healthy activity.”
- Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
“Sure, the gods were a badly behaving lot in stories - jealous, impatient, selfish, vengeful, smiting whole races of people, raping virgins, sending plagues and pestilences - and even as gods went, Coyote was a particularly bad example, but they were supposed to stay in the damn stories, not show up and hump your homely secretary until she made monkey noises.”
- Christopher Moore, Coyote Blue
“It took just six weeks for Samson Hunts Alone, the Crow Indian, to become Samuel Hunter, the shape-shifter. The transformation began with the cowboy on the bus mistaking Samson for a Mexican. When Samson left the bus in Elko, Nevada, and caught a ride with a racist trucker, he became white for the first time. He expected, from listening to Pokey all those years, that upon turning white he would immediately have the urge to go out and find some Indians and take their land, but the urge didn't come, so he sat nodding as the trucker talked. By the time he got out at Sacramento, California, California, Samson had memorized the trucker's litany of white supremacy and was just getting into the rhythm of racism when he caught a ride with a black trucker who took amphetamines and waxed poetic about oppression, injustice, and the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government by either the Black Panthers, the Teamsters, or the Temptations. Samson wasn't sure which.”
- Christopher Moore, Coyote Blue