Colum McCann

The thing is, we all have a deep need to tell a story—that’s the thing. Everybody needs to tell a story, whether it be to your shrink, whether it be to your publisher, whether it be to whomever, that’s the vast democracy—the only democracy, in fact, that we have that goes across every geography, every age group. We tell stories in different ways, obviously, with the clothes we wear, with the car we drive, and things like that. But at heart, everybody wants somebody to talk to and to be listened to. That’s the function of literature. This is why we do get charged up about talking about books, because it’s somehow how we have our finger on a pulse that’s alive.

It’s not like working in the bank. It’s not working in the insurance company and going home and sticking in the DVD and not talking to anyone. So it seems to me the writer and the good reader, they are almost the same thing. [Each] gets out and does look for those stories. And then they find them sometimes in books, too. That’s why you like Harrison. Why do you enjoy reading Harrison or Peter Carey? Or John Berger or Ondaatje or Toni Morrison, it doesn’t matter who. Louise Erdrich. Because you feel like you are being talked to, you are listening, and it’s dignified.
-Colum McCann
source