Will Thomas
Will Thomas
Will Thomas may refer to:...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
CountryUnited States of America
honesty authenticity bigs
Honesty and authenticity are a big deal for me.
hate stereotype cliche
I hate stereotypes and I hate cliche.
together gathering obsession
I'm a great believer in gathering together all your obsessions and seeing if you can make a novel out of them.
divorce would-be possibility
Living for ever would be like marrying yourself, with no possibility of a divorce.
philosophy people lucky
You can't do science in a novel, but you can do philosophy. Or, if you're really lucky, you can manage to pose a question in such a way that other people will take it on.
meaningful way normal
It's not even a question of whether the universe is meaningful or meaningless. It's in what way could it be meaningful, or in what way, if it was meaningful, could that be even more meaningless than normal meaninglessness?
theoretical-physics frustrated way
In some ways I'm a frustrated scientist or mathematician. The amount of times I've thought I'd go back to university and do theoretical physics because I like the big questions, but really I know now that that's not quite me. What's me is to do it in novels.
reading mean thinking
I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.
imagine anxious wells
Everything I know I imagine everyone else knows as well. And then everything that everyone else knows I imagine they know on top of what I know, so I'm constantly anxious about what everyone else knows.
ideas bigs minutiae
My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic life.
reality life-is-like stories
I pray for meaning. I pray for the limits of reality to become clear. For a world – and a type of being – that makes sense. I pray for a life after death that is not like this life. I pray for the end of mystery. What would a life be like with all the mysteries solved? If there were no questions, there’d be no stories. If there were no stories, there’d be no language. If there was no language there’d be no . . . What?
wall church posters
Over to my left is the big grey wall in front of the church. Are we the Thoughts of God? a poster asks. No, I realise. It's the reverse.
sometimes grownups
Sometimes you have to trust grownups, perhaps more so when they are not there to actually supervise you.
real mean stuff-happens
In real life nothing means anything. Stuff happens and there just is no structure.