Komsun Nanthachit The multi-tasking writer, TV host, architect, actor and bar owner has no ambition, he says—only childish obsessions.

To be a writer, you don’t have to look at the world differently. You just have to be able to tell a story. Other people might think like I do, but they don’t know how to transfer that idea into written words.

I don’t know if I have a writing style. I don’t care.

I read the books I’ve written and I wonder why people read them. Those books are so personal that I wonder if readers can get anything out of them. My mom has even asked me whether I could please write something a bit more “readable”.

These days I communicate only the messages I want to share. I’m less impulsive, maybe because of my age. I think more and I reflect more.

I’m not going to make money from this profession; I accepted this fact from day one. We don’t give enough importance to reading, here. It’s just stupid. There are many great writers
who are simply ignored.

It’s a sad story for our country. People don’t support great work. Not only in the writing business but also in film and music—it’s all the same.

One of my duties as a writer is to find a good book and write about it. I am very happy when I read a book and go “mmh…”

Bookshops are about business and advertisment. Bookshops are both retailers and publishers. So in their shops, they sell their books and leave no space for good books published by others.

Thai people do read but I don’t know what they read. I’m not going to say if the books that they read are good or bad. I can only say that they are still many other kinds of books out there that should be read. On a positive note, I did find the Bangkok International Book Fair pretty crowded during the weekend.

I write what I choose. No one can tell me what to do. I begin my stories with the feeling that I have to convey a message and that I have to convey it today.

I used to think that no one would read my books. But it seems people do.

Books last. A book can travel anywhere, stick around for years, until it reaches someone who likes it.

TV shows respond to a different logic. I don’t make them with my money. When making a TV show, you must answer to many people, like advertisers. I can’t just throw away other people’s money.

I don’t believe that we can fully control or enforce any rule in this country. This country is very good at finding loopholes. For instance, if the rule says you can’t buy whisky from convenience stores after midnight… well, there are always other places that will sell it. We are very good at this.

I open my pub to smokers. I warn customers that people in this bar smoke.

I can’t say that I don’t agree with the recent smoking ban. I know smoking harms and annoys people. I can see that this law has produced good results.

In this country, the authority sees us as children all the time. They like to tell us to do this or not to do that.

It’s ordinary for teenagers to be rebellious and it’s ordinary for people who have passed that age not to understand them. I believe that all of us, when we were younger, were criticized by our elders.

I don’t like very young children. They are like a different species to me. I don’t understand
them and I can’t communicate with them. They are cute—as long as they don’t come anywhere near me.

I don’t want a family and I don’t want to get married. I want to have a girlfriend, though. I like women. I just feel that when it comes down to having a family, there’s a great deal of responsibility and with that, the relationship loses its sweetness.

I feel like I’m still a kid. I can be very curious and I won’t stop reading comics. I always tell my friends that we need to feel like a child at heart.

Men, all of them, are still kids. No matter how old they are, they still have toys. It can be a football, cars, golf gear or gigs. For me it’s vinyls. You will see their childishness when they get crazy over their toys—nothing can stop them then.

It’s not that I want to look cool, but I really have no ambition. My life goes on because of vinyl. I just live to wait for the records to arrive. My seniors always tell me that I have to plan my future. I don’t really know what I want to do in the future.