Yann Martel

Is a Jackson Pollock true?

It's the wrong question to ask, but it does something to us that vivifies how we feel about life, clarifies how we feel about life.

So to me, truth, as I said, can be captured in many ways, and story is a great way, because stories obviously come from life.

Harry Potter comes from life, observations of life on Earth, and then it refines it into something orderly, shapely, meaningful, truthful.

So author's note is a nice way of starting from reality, your life, to fiction.

So author's note, we expect to be truthful, and it is truthful.

There's nothing lying in my author's notes, but they start leading you from factual truthfulness to fictional truthfulness.

So it's a nice way to capture you.

Yeah, you don't want to be unhealthy.

So I have a treadmill desk and I walk and I have a desk and I write.

I've written three books on it.

I've worn down the treadmill.

It's a wonderful way to write.

You can't use a mouse, you have to use a trackpad.

It's in my little tiny studio and I've had it for years now.

Just a way to not be sitting all the time.

And metaphorically, it's nice.

As I'm walking through a story, entering it, I'm also literally walking on my treadmill desk.

And my greater process otherwise, as I said, I think all writers are kind of like a vacuum cleaner looking for a story, looking for something that's not an anecdote, that has legs.

And it's extraordinarily exciting when you get an idea.