Brief Interviews With Hideous Men-Nicholas Sparks

Sparks on Cormac McCarthy winner of the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship:

"Cormac McCarthy? "Horrible," he says, looking at Blood Meridian. "This is probably the most pulpy, overwrought, melodramatic cowboy vs. Indians story ever written."

Even hearing a passage about a sunset in which "the mountains in their blue islands stood footless in the void like floating temples" doesn't sway him.

Any he thinks are overrated?

"I don't like to say bad things about others."

Except McCarthy? "He deserves it," Spark says with a laugh.

Sparks on Sparks:

Asked what he likes in his own genre, Sparks replies: "There are no authors in my genre. No one is doing what I do."


Sparks on Domination:

"There's a difference between drama and melodrama; evoking genuine emotion, or manipulating emotion. It's a very fine eye-of-the-needle to thread. And it's very rare that it works. That's why I tend to dominate this particular genre.

Sparks on why he's the heir to Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare and Hemingway:

“I write in a genre that was not defined by me. The examples were not set out by me. They were set out 2,000 years ago by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. They were called the Greek tragedies. A thriller is supposed to thrill. A horror novel is supposed to scare you. A mystery is supposed to keep you turning the pages, guessing ‘whodunit?’

“A romance novel is supposed to make you escape into a fantasy of romance. What is the purpose of what I do? These are love stories. They went from (Greek tragedies), to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, then Jane Austen did it, put a new human twist on it. Hemingway did it with A Farewell to Arms.”

Sparks on writing screenplays:

It didn’t, because they’re very different animals, I guess. Screenplays are very easy to write quite frankly — I don’t find them very challenging at all.

Sparks on how to come up with novel ideas:

Well the inspiration for the story was, like most of the novels, after finishing a novel, I immediately start thinking about the next novel that I’m going to write and I try to make it different.

Sparks on inside lingo and dealing with Miley Cyrus:

Nope and nope. They get involved once the production starts. How she’s going to play the role, how she’s dressed, costumed — it’s called costuming although it’s just what they wear."

Some of Cormac McCarthy's writing:

“Far back beyond the mountain a thin wire of lightning glowed briefly.”

Excerpt from the New Yorker in which James Wood sights his elegant diction:


the stars “fall all night in bitter arcs,” and the wolves trot “neat of foot” alongside the horsemen, and the lizards, “their leather chins flat to the cooling rocks,” fend off the world “with thin smiles and eyes like cracked stone plates,” and the grains of sand creep past all night “like armies of lice on the move,” and “the blue cordilleras stood footed in their paler image on the sand like reflections in a lake.”

Quotes from The Judge in Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy:

"It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be....
War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god."

"The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
Toadvine sat with his boots crossed before the fire. No man can acquaint himself with everything on this earth, he said.
The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of this world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate."

"And the answer, said the judge. If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons.
The judge looked about him. He was sat before the fire naked save for his breeches and his hands rested palm down upon his knees. His eyes were empty slots. None among the company harbored any notion as to what this attitude implied, yet so like an icon was he in his sitting that they grew cautious and spoke with circumspection among themselves as if they would not waken something that had better been left sleeping."

Nicholas Sparks Quotes:

"Love is like the wind, you can't see it but you can feel it"

"Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can't get any better, it can."

"We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has only happened once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it."

"You are the answer to every prayer I've offered. You are a song, a dream, a whisper, and I don't know how I could have lived without you for as long as I have."

Case Closed. Nicholas Sparks= Writer with a giant capital W. Cormac McCarthy=his bit-h.