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'It's perfectly possible that the great 21st-century American novel is in a shoebox in somebody's closet'

1 December 2014

'I hope I never condescend to the audience. I think you should write as if people who are smarter than you are will read it, because they are out there.

I don't know where these great governing clichés (about writing) come from - that you have to follow a convention, or that the first sentence has to hook the reader in. That's just poison. So much of the time I spend teaching, I actually spend unteaching...

I think my childhood made me very aware of language. I was interested in writing before I really had any conception that there were professional writers. I just did it for the pleasure of it - these bad little poems that I produced quite prolifically...

I have been very well treated by the literary world but, at the same time, I know enough literary history to know that doesn't necessarily mean that you're the person in the world doing the important work... You have to keep in mind that it's perfectly possible that the great 21st-century American novel is in a shoebox in somebody's closet, and won't be found for 50 years.'

Marilynne Robinson, author of Housekeeping and Lila, in the Sunday Telegraph's Stella