“I think of novelists that I really return to and admire, you can almost sense that the book is somehow ahead of them, just a little bit ahead of them, no? You could write from the front: you could pull the book; there are masters that do that, and you can admire the architecture of it. […] I suppose what I look for as a reader is a writer who's risky, who's putting themselves in a position that's vulnerable, where the text knows a little bit more, is a bit ahead of them. And so I aspire to write those books, and that's why I suppose I put myself in that position.”

Personal Quotes 2009–2012

Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)
Context: I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can't be a writer if you're not a reader. It's the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.

On how he defines good storytelling in “San Jose’s Christopher Oscar Peña no longer ‘Insecure’ about work” https://www.sfchronicle.com/tv/article/San-Jose-s-Christopher-Oscar-Pe-a-no-longer-11297163.php in SF Gate (2017 Jul 18)

1970s-, The Captains, the Kings, and Taylor Caldwell (1978)

A Little Bit Me, performed by The Monkees (1967)
Song lyrics

Source: "What I’ve Learned: Padma Lakshmi" in Esquire https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a37862708/padma-lakshmi-what-ive-learned-interview-2021/ (2 November 2021)

Source: On how she uses visualization in her writings in “Interview with Donna Tartt” https://medium.com/@Powells/interview-with-donna-tartt-8d86a2438b41 in Medium (2015 Jul 13)

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: Looking for Alibrandi