I don’t like the concept of not being allowed to go somewhere just because you’re not part of the gang. In London, it seems like everywhere is a club. I hate the fact you’ve got to be a member of one to get a late-night drink in the center. It’s horrible. And I mean, I’m a member of one there, but I never go to it. There’s something about them that is kind of culty, actually—the idea that we are the in-crowd.

The modern architecture that I have been weaned on also espouses (clear) function, (exposed) structure, and (raw) material as principles—characteristics that tend to be accessed only from realistic or substantive dimensions. Fictionality or imagination, the other dimension, is omitted entirely. However, Vitruvius emphasized venustas, in other words attraction or beauty as a necessity along with strength and function.

I always say the Nubank story was very unlikely. It was a very low probability event. Again. We were going after these very big incumbent banks. Everybody told me, you know, you're Colombian. You have no idea what you're doing in Brazil. They're going to crush you. Like, don't. Just don't do it. And I did it mostly because everybody told me I couldn't do it. And so, if somebody tells me I can't do something, I want to go do it.

The press and the public have created an image of Ed Hillary, hero and explorer which simply doesn’t exist. They’ve painted a picture of me as a heroic type, full of enormous courage, tremendous strength, undying enthusiasm and all the rest of it. But it’s all really just a story, that’s been written up in the newspapers. I’m a person, as I’ve said, of modest abilities, with a good deal of determination, and I do quite a lot of planning ahead. With careful planning and good motivation, I think you can often achieve things that other much more talented people would probably do much more easily.

These mandarin-precious-princess-and-the-pea notions about a writer’s “special place” just didn’t match my life.

Based on how the scene felt I completely switched the dynamics.

Touchstone books….I don’t know. So Long, See You Tomorrow; The Moviegoer; A Fan’s Notes; Alice Munro’s stories.

I want to be able to do what I have always done which is to say, "I could do this no better. I could not make this better."

I’d read Something Happened, by Joe Heller; I’d read “A Fan’s Notes,” by Frederick Exley; and I’d read The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy.

Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer’s a good idea.