To understand a man, you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty, Napoleon is supposed to have said. The quotation is probably apocryphal, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. For me, it is this world by the river that counts. When I sit down to write a novel, the natural time for it to take place in is the Eighties, as though that era embodied the world’s true form, its essence, and everything that came later were a kind of deviation. Even though I google various topics as I’m writing, the characters in the novel don’t google anything; it never occurs to them. The same is true when I dream. Cell phones and the internet never appear in my dreams, which are populated mostly by the people I was surrounded by forty years ago.

“The Reenchanted World," Karl Ove Knausgaard.

Another writer said he “was a confident, gray-eyed, wild-bearded, chain-smoking philosopher-poet who lived on whiskey and ice cream and never went to bed before 4 a.m.”

From Rebels of Reason

“Mad Max, an Australian documentary.” Matt.

“It’s a birth scene, not a boss scene.” ChatGPT 5.2 analyzes The Spider-God’s Bride.

”We want adult tension. The tension of brains. If anyone sees sex, that’s on them. We’re not responsible for the public’s imagination. We’re responsible for moving units in Woolworths.”

“Always be suspicious of a dish that has five shots of vodka lined up so you can brace yourself.” From Ye Olde WWW.

Cross silo ROI is not legible.

”Betty’s boyfriend-to-be is a dog-chef called Bimbo, who serenades her on a duck that transforms into a guitar, while the restaurant clientele and staff include a fantastical menagerie of animals.” It was a different time.

The new mid-life crisis is reading Proust.

“We shall endeavor to survive the loss of your opinions.” Westenberg.