Martin Amis on writers' business

"...and all writers know this, that they’re exposing themselves a hundred per cent when they write a book. You can write a poem without giving much away but a novel tells the right kind of reader everything… what you do for someone like John Self is you take the one per cent of your character that is like that with the gamble, the strong hunch, that everyone has one per cent of him in them and then you make a whole character out of it. But it’s round the edges and the way it’s shaped, the decisions the writer is making – a good reader can get the whole picture from that.” 

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 Martin Amis interview