Min Jin Lee

And I didn't do it before I read that Willa Cather did it after I quit being a lawyer to write full time.

And then now that I've done it, now that I started the practice, I can't quit anymore.

So I've read the Bible now, I think, seven times in a loop because I read literally one chapter a day sequentially.

It's not out of order.

So it's very in line with my OCD.

Now, you've said that it's been helpful to understand how things are written with a long scope.

And I'm wondering how that's helpful.

I think for the kinds of books that I want to write, I want to write social realistic novels, especially with dealing with societal problems and the way oppressed minorities fit into them.

And I'm dealing primarily with the idea of diaspora.

The idea that I could work in the context of a biblical understanding gives me a kind of, I guess, not just scope, but also compassion for the minor characters in life and also all the reluctant prophets, all the winds of history.

It's all in there.

And pretty much every major Western writer

has had to be steeped in the Bible by training.

And therefore, it's helpful for me to read the classics in light of my understanding of the Bible because it's all there.

In the same way, you have to know mythology if you really want to write literature in the West.

Do you think that there's a lot of compassion embedded in the Bible?

I do.

I do think there's a lot of compassion in the Bible.

And there's also a lot of evil in

A lot of evil is chronicled in the Bible, and I think that in a way that it's helpful for me to think about it that way.