Yeah, there are a certain number of angry people in... in my books, beginning really with Lucy Nelson in When She Was Good and going up to, I don't know what  I guess in The Human Stain, Coleman Silk is enraged by what's been done to him, but that isn't the whole of The Human Stain. But, I guess, I can write about anger. Anger, rage, outrage excites my verbal energy, just as lust excites Nabokov's verbal energy in Lolita.

You're not feeling the emotions the characters are feeling when you're writing about them. That's the last thing you're feeling. So I... when I'm writing about Lucy Nelson being angry or Ira Ringold in I Married a Communist, being... who's a very angry guy, being angry. While I'm writing, I'm not angry. It doesn't work that way. I'm excited by what I can do with his anger. When Portnoy was angry, I was happy. And I remember it. I thought, yippee, here we go. Let him go, let him do it. So, I'm able, I think, to have some success in writing about anger. When Portnoy's feeling lust in Portnoy's Complaint, I'm not feeling lust, I'm writing, I'm finding the sentences. I have too much to do to be lustful too, you know. So, I've also written about other... other emotions, and... I would hope