Something I found while writing ‘Alice & Oliver’ – a book that is unquestionably a work of fiction, but which also borrows details from my own life – is that writing the truth often requires invention and imagination. Charles Bock Read Quote
My grandfather was a pawnbroker, and when I was in first or second grade, my parents opened their own store. I probably learned to count by putting pawn tickets in numerical order in the back room of the shop. Charles Bock Read Quote
I was not a happy or popular or happy-with-myself kid, and I wasn’t an especially motivated student, either. Charles Bock Read Quote
My parents have a pawnshop in Downtown Las Vegas for quite awhile. I grew up seeing people come in and want – need – money so they could go and gamble again or so they could pay their bills or whatever reason, and try and sell items that were of value to them. Charles Bock Read Quote
It’s been wonderful to hear so many excited and intelligent responses to ‘Beautiful Children,’ not only from reviewers but also from the people coming out to my readings. Charles Bock Read Quote
It wasn’t a leap for me to go from not wanting to be in my body as a teenager, not wanting to be in my house, to thinking, ‘What would happen if I had disappeared?’ And then going from writing scenes of angry kids to thinking a little more about the parents and what their lives would be like. Charles Bock Read Quote
To me, fiction is the single best way there is – to me, it’s the most profound way – of dealing with questions that have no answers. Charles Bock Read Quote
What I try to do is write about forgotten people, and, in a certain sense, we’re all forgotten. Charles Bock Read Quote
I’ve always been less interested in the person on the top of the Bellagio than I am at the person whose house got moved to create the Bellagio. Charles Bock Read Quote
