>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with science and quantum computing, some combination of quantum physics and digital computing. lev grossman wrote the cover story for "time" magazine. it's called the infinity machine. it's all about the future. >> well, i went out skeptical because it sounds with all the multiple dimensions and everything else it sounds like science fiction and i left realizing that down at that level on the quantum level all that power is there. it's down there and one day somebody's going to unlock it. and when they do, a lot of things are going to change. i don't know who it's going to be and when it's going to happen but there is another stage to the evolution of computers and this is it. >> rose: we continue with donna tartt, she is the author of "the goldfinch."

this is a conversation we recorded at the frick museum where "the goldfinch" was on exhibition. the journey that i want to take the reader on always is the journey that i loved most when i was reading as a child just this galloping gleeful you don't know what's going to happen next and i don't want my books ever to be an amusement park ride that is sort of very predictable up, down, up, down and you wind around the track and end up in the same place. i want the car to jump the track. i want the car to be out in the woods somewhere and you don't know where you are and you are wondering where the amusement park is and don't know how to get back. >> rose: we conclude with "new york times" photographer linsey addario. >> rose: and what are the children like? are their faces different? >> their faces are traumatized, a lot of them in jordan have seen a lot. they've come out of serious fighting, bombing, they're violent.

when i first went in april they were throwing rocks nonstop. they -- most of the children are not in school so now you have syrian children who have missed two, three years of school. that's a huge amount. >> rose: quantum computing, donna tartt and linsey addario when we continue. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose.

>> this is the inside of one of our dilution refrigerators. all of this infrastructure is to basically operate the chip at a temperatures that's two orders s of magnitude colder than interstellar space. >> rose: this is in this week's "time" magazine. it investigates quantum computing and a company called d-wave that manufactures quantum computers. lev grossman wrote the story. i'm pleased to have him back at this table. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: this caught my eye, the cover of "time" magazine. it promises to solve some of humanity's most complex problems. it's backed by jeff bezos, nasa and the c.i.a., each one cost $10 million and operates at 459

degrees fahrenheit below zero and nobody knows how it actually works. and then you call it the infinity machine. what are we talking about? >> well, this is a new kind of computer. we are talking about something that works on tpraepbt paradigm from everything that's been built since the 1950s or so up. >> rose: the whole digital revolution. >> the whole digital revolution. we're tapping into a new kind of force in computing. >> rose: a new kind of force? >> that's right. >> rose: and it comes from quantum physics in part? >> that's right. computers as we have now as complex as they are, they operate under what t laws of what we call classical physics which is new tonian things we see in daily life but things apply differently when you get to the subatomic level. >> rose: and that is? >> subatomic particles, photons,

electrons, that sort of thing. they play by different rules and under those rules you have a lot of exotic phenomena which seem very counterintuitive to us. things like superposition. a quantum system can be in two different states simultaneously. >> rose: what does that mean? >> (laughs) well, to bring it into the realm of computing regular computers process data in the form of 1s and 0s. when off quantum computer it also works with 1s and 0s but its individual bits-- which they call quantum bits or q-bits can be 1 and 0 or 1 and 0 at the same time. >time. >> rose: and that gives you the potential to do what? >> well, superposition is part of the picture but what that gives you is basically if you've got a bit that can be in two states at the same time it gives you the option the option of

performing two operations at the same time. >> rose: so therefore you can do things much faster? >> much faster. very much faster. and the power increases exponentially. if you have two bits you can do four things at the same time. three bits eight things. and that very quickly that doubling takes you into very large numbers, larger than the number of atoms in the universe. >> rose: so that leads me to this obvious question. what are the practical implications of quantum computing? >> well, once you start digging into quantum computing you realize very quickly that everybody you're dealing with is a genius and that not all the geniuses agree with each other. >> rose: so there's differences here. >> there are differences of opinion on that score. >> rose: as to what the -- the application of quantum computing? >> that's right. these things are very alien. very different from conventional computers and one of the problems we have with them basically is figuring out how to ask them the right questions. how to program them with the algorithms we need to get useful

answers out of them and the question is what kind of answer cans we get out of them, we know some of that and some we don't know. i i and what are the right questions to ask? >> well, for example, there's an algorithm called shores algorithm which has to do with encryption. basically quantum computers could factorize very large numbers very fast. they can do problems that would take conventional computers literally centurieses to do. >> rose: centuries? >> yeah. >> rose: and they can do them? >> they can do them fast enough that it's a practical thing and that means just for example that quantum computer could break most of the encryption that is currently used on internet right now. it could crack those codes. >> rose: explain why the c.i.a. may be interested? >> yes, and the n.s.a. one of the things that came out of the edward snowden leaks was that the n.s.a. has been working quite hard on its quantum computing initiative. >> so it can break encryptions.

>> presumably, yes. >> rose: okay, let's take the corporate side now. there is this guy in this canadian firm. what's the firm's name? >> d-wave. >> rose: and what is d-wave about? >> well, most quantum computers exist as laboratory experiments, very, very rudimentary ones. but there's one company, d-wave, and they're canadian, that builds these things on a scale that nobody else -- it's unheard of and not only do they build them, they sell them. you can buy a quantum computer. they are the only people in the world who claim to be able to do this. >> rose: and those people who have them do what with them? >> so far they have three customers: google and lockheed martin, nasa and an intelligence agency to be named later. >> rose: and they have -- they cost $10 million? >> that's right. >> rose: explain this whole thing about freezing temperature. the lowest temperature known before this was somewhere where?

>> way out in the boomerang nebula which is a nebula about 5,000 light years away. >> rose: it's 459 degrees below -- is it fahrenheit? >> fahrenheit, right. it's very close to absolute zero. these things are slightly colder than that. and the reason is when you have a cubit, in order to get it to behave in this quantum way, you have to isolate it from the environment around it. and that means no vibration, no information, and no heat. the way d-wave builds its computers it uses superconducting and it can only do it at these very low temperatures. >> rose: you mentioned google. they want to see whether -- google wants to use a d-wave to sense whether people are blinking or winking when they use google glass. >> that is one application. google wants a quantum computer,

i think, because it's neat. they like cool toys and they don't care how much it costs to get them. >> rose: and they don't know where it might lead and they want to be there if it goes somewhere. >> there are very powerful applications in artificial intelligence and machine learning, in search which is obviously something that google has a major investment in. >> rose: and nasa wants to use it? >> mission planning would be one option, logistics. but also the search for kpoe planets, earth-like planets in other solar systems. >> rose: if you went to see 25 of the smartest computer scientists, physicists that you know, a consensus 25, would 20 of them agree on the future of quantum computing? >> i think they would agree on the power of it. i don't think they would agree on how exactly you'll build a

quantum computer or when it's going to happen. there are many schools of thought on that. >> rose: some might think you can do this with it, others might think you can do this with it. some may think you can do less things than anybody else imagines. >> yeah. >> rose: and who do you believe? who's convincing to you because you spent some time to write this piece. >> yes, well, they are all very much smarter than me so i tend to be convinced by whoever i'm talking to at the moment but i tend to -- i'm biased toward the conservative ones. >> rose: oh, really. >> well, we know about the encryption stuff, we know about some simulation of quantum behavior and a lot of the other stuff remains to be seen. >> rose: having talked to these people, whether it's going to happen or not happen, whether it has real possibilities or not, what's the sexiest thing that you've heard that and by that i mean creating artificial

intelligence like we've never seen before. going places that we can't imagine going. >> the things i think of are -- as artificial intelligence, machine learning, i mean that is -- that is one of those things that will change everything. >> rose: go ahead. >> if we get there, if we create a computer that's smarter than us many -- it's been said it's the last invention we'll ever have to make because the computer will invent everything else for us. >> rose: here's your story "quantum leap: inside the tangled quest for the future of computing." why did you call it the infinity machine? >> because, although it is not literally infinite, you get into numbers that so r so huge so fast. i mean, we are talking about, as i said before, more operations simultaneously thanker there atoms in the universe. >> rose: you wrote these words "major companies and government agencies believe it will change

how we cure disease, explore the heavens and do business on earth." if quantum computing becomes a reality, we're more likely to find out quicker if there is, as they use the term, intelligent life in other places in the universe. >> it's speculation, honestly. but that is -- that's an exciting possibility. >> rose: or the possibilities to send out signals that might be heard by somebody somewhere else to listen to their signals vice versa. >> i think we're already pretty good at that. that's not the kind of problem that quantum computers attack. they attack problems that where there are for example vast amounts of data. you hear how we're living in the age of big data. quantum computers have no fear of vast amounts of data. >> rose: albert einstein, pretty smart guy, said when he was talking about quantum physics "i cannot believe that god plays dice with the world."

what did he mean? >> well, i mentioned before superposition. another property that pertains -- >> rose: uncertainty. >> right. we can not know i believe the vector and the location of subatomic particle at the same time. einstein found this this so counterintuitive that he thought quantum physics must be either wrong or grievously incomplete. >> rose: you have described d-wave'wave quantum computing wh the following analogy.

>> rose: one of the things that is most elegant and interesting about quantum computers is this theory which a lot of serious physicists believe that it is operating in multiple dimensions at the same time. so you have thousands of dimensions, each of which contains a quantum computer, each of which is processing something slightly different and the answer is harvested from across these many dimensions back into one. so you have with the analogy of the landscape you could look at many points on the landscape at the same time and then the answer comes back to you fast. very fast. >> rose: there is this. some people don't believe-- some people-- that d-wave has quantum computers, that what they have are not, in fact, quantum computers. is that correct? >> that's right. there's' an enormous amount of controversy over that because

they have this machine. it's fast, not faster yet than conventional computers and there are a lot of people who have tested this machine extensively who say we don't think there's any quantum computing happening inside it. we think it's a regular computer with an exotic form of processor but not doing anything out of the ordinary. and there are those who think that no matter how big d-wave builds the computers they've got they won't make it faster than conventional computers. so there's so much as in a great deal of quantum mechanics that is uncertain. >> rose: so what do you make of jordy rose who's the head of d-wave. what kind of fell slow he? >> he is a man of enormous self-confidence. one of the first things i learned about him was that he was a competitive wrestler in college and when i met him i thought i wouldn't want to wrestle this guy because he's determined and there isn't much that intimidates him.

least of all the challenge of building these things that people say can't be built. >> rose: so between the time you began to investigate this story and today when you've written the story and it' it ou, how did it change your impression of the possibilities? what did you go through? >> rose: well, i went out skeptical because it sounds with all the multiple dimensions and everything else it sounds like science fiction and i left realizing that down at that level on the quantum level that power is there. it's down there and one day somebody's going to unlock it and when they do a lot of things will change. i don't know who it will be and when it will happen but there is another stage to the evolution of computers and this is it. >> rose: so in the pantheon of great indicators of the future or one of the great keys to

unlocking the future, here it is. you can at least say that. >> rose.>> yeah, i do say that. >> and what are the other kinds of things like quantum computing that really smart people either from the world of physics or from the world of digital computing or the world of biology are doing that you would put at the same level? >i think the stuff going on in antiaging for example. this is one of the things that you go into and you think death is one of the great realities of our existence and then you meet people who say no, i don't believe that. death is an illness that can be cured. and they are looking at why we age and thinking about why it's

possible we may not age. >> rose: take me to them. >> i'm ready. >> rose: that's another exciting thing having to do more in biology. the big idea is that intriguing for us like quantum computing, like antiaging. what else? >> robotics, i think has enormous power. >> rose: because we haven't even got close to its potential. but automating forms of labor. >> rose: which is very exciting in terms of productivity but raises questions about what happens to humans. >> rose: yes, what's our job when the robot cans do it. >> rose: these are exciting questions. i thank you for coming. >> thank you. >> rose: i repeat this, from "time" magazine, the cover story, it is because we have people thinking about things like this that we do, in fact, move forward. thyme says it promises to solve some of humanity's most complex problems and interestingly it is backed by jeff bezos and some

other people who have been reasonably good at figuring out what the future might be. back in a moment. stay with us. >> who knows why he's painted the goldfinch at all. a tiny stand alone masterpiece unique of all its kind, he was young, celebrated. >> rose: from quantum computing to the literary mind of donna tartt. the publication of a tartt novel is a literary event. he new book "the goldfinch" was ten years in the making. it centers around the painting by carel a fabritius. i spoke with donna tartt for. here's a portion of that interview. and the journey you want us to khp#ter the explosion at the

met and theo is charged with saving the goldfinch is what? >> the journey that i want to take the reader on always is the journey that i loved most when i was reading as a child just this galloping gleeful you don't know what what's going to happen next and i don't want my books ever to be an amusement park ride that's very predictable, up down, up down and you wind around the track and end up in the same place. i want the car to jump the track. i want the car to be out in the woods somewhere and you don't know where you are and you are wondering where the amusement park is. and you don't have to get back. i want there to be real danger for the -- if there's real danger for the character there's real danger and surprise for the reader as well for me i really

feel if there's no surprise for the writer there's no surprise for the reade reader you alwayse to be writing at the risk point. i always do, anyway. >> rose: danger something that has big meaning to you in the sense of the confrontation with danger? >> it's something that i think gives a great sense of liveliness in work and a great sense of fun as well. reading should be fun. >> rose: reading has been essential to your life. >> it has and continues to be. >> rose: sitting in the library you read everything you could get your hands on when you were working at the library. >> i started working at the library when i was 14. >> rose: and you said dickens went from outside to inside. so it became part of you. >> yes. well, that's the wonderful thing about books. that's the thing that books can do that no other art form can do. when we read a great book we do internalize it. it becomes part of us.

when we read a great book we put it wn and we're different people. if a great novel will really immesh rabbbly add to our understanding of human character and human nature in a way that's very difficult in real life to have that kind of concentrated experience. you can have it in novel. you can live many lives by reading books. >> rose: every review i've read compares you and this work to dickens. dickens was somebody that was inside of you, as you said, stephen king to name a famous writer -- >> who's another writer whose work i love and have venn rated since i was a child. >> rose: the best of dickens here, what is it you think is the connection? >> rose: what i love about dickens so much as a writer is there's no technical problem that dickens doesn't do well.

he's amazing at character. he's amazing at suspense. he's got a fantastic command of metaphor. he's very, very funny. he is -- he's a fantastic storyteller. he's wonderful in terms of plot. you can't put his books down. and the thing about dickens i love so much, there's a warmth about him. he's a great teacher. many artists are very opaque and tried to hide their effects. dickens doesn't do that. dickens lets you in. if you're willing to learn from dickens, you know, come on in. he shows you how he does it and it's not just writerly tricks but dickens will teach you a lot about life reading him, as i said the experience of human nature, one's experience of human nature can be immesmeasury enlargened by reading a great novel by dickens. >> rose: as dickens does, you

also ask beyond the thrill of the narrative and beyond the thrill of the unfolding story there are also moral questions. >> yes, dickens is very wise morally. the novel is a -- really an extended moral play in time. it's a stage in which we can see moral problems played out in realtime as we would in a human life and it really broadens our sense of -- in novels we get to be people there the inside and we get to understand how people behave the way they do. >> rose: so question what questions are you grappling with here? what is love? what else. >> what is love? what is the good life? >> rose: what do you mean by that? and why is that interesting for you? >> well, the idea is that -- well, there are many definitions of the good life. is the good life to be happy

one's self? is it making people happy at the expense of one's own happiness? i think there are questions we have to ask ourselves repeatedly in life. is it being dutiful? is it being a good public citizen? is it loyalty to family? is it loyalty to work? what is it? what is it for any of us. >> rose: what is it for you? >> for for me -- for me -- well, i think two great salvations, love and work. >> rose: i do, too. you got it. you can get love and work, life will be very good to you. >> then everything else falls into place. >> rose: if you have love and work and good health life can be yours. >> exactly. >> rose: have you found both? >> yes. >> rose: when you wrote "the secret history" you were, what, 22? how old were you? >> i started writing it when i was 19 but i didn't publish it until i was 28. >> rose: 28. okay. so a ten-year period you were

writing that. when it exploded on to the scene, what was that like for you? >> it was very disoriented because i wasn't expecting it at all to write something that long in solitude having -- you have to understand when you're a writer there's no one coming in at the end of the day saying "wow, that's a great passage you just wrote. that's wonderful." so i don't know how people were going to respond to it and i was worried. my friends were all in graduate school and were doing things and had jobs and i really had been working in solitude for -- on this book for a long time. i don't know if you remember mr. dick in "david copperfield" but he's working on his history and -- he's been working on it for many, many years and everyone talks in hushed tones about it because they don't believe the history exists and that was a bit like it was with my family in this book. i think -- >> rose: so three novels and how many years invested in three novels? >> so it's been 30 years.

they've been a decade each. >> how many books can you write? >> i guess not many if i go with this devastatingly slow pace. five would be good. >> rose: can you become prolific and start with -- i mean, don't you get faster with effort? >> i've tried to write faster and i don't really enjoy it. i don't enjoy the process of doing that. i've tried to speed up. i thought well, i'll try to write -- it was a mistake. i thought i'll try to write a book in a year. i didn't enjoy it at all. it was no fun for me. no fun for the writer; no fun for the reader. >> rose: how do you write? >> in a very confused way. it's -- when i first begin writing a book it doesn't look like a book. it's all sorts of disorganized notes all over the place. it's what i start out with notes

i've taken in tiny notebooks, i write all the time and some of these things will suggest something larger. and i have to trust in my subconscious that the things are linked but i don't know how. >> rose: how do you find out? >> you just -- at some point you know. if you sit there long enough and you are -- that's where the diligence and persistence comes in. >> rose: who sees the copy first? do you show it by chapter when you're writing? is there someone who is a first read for you? >> i do and it's important to have -- particularly with a book that takes this long to write with the very difficult heavy lifting in the middle of the novel you do need someone to tell you the rough truth. sometimes something will not work and you need someone -- >> rose: so there's someone who says "donna, you know --".

>> nope, nope. >> rose: don't go there. or you're not there yet. >> exactly. not there yet. sometimes that's what it is. you're not there yet. there needs to be a bit more. it's hard. it's hard with anything like that. you can't see it yourself. you always need a second opinion even if you're getting dressed sometimes it's best to ask someone you know. >> rose: here's what's interesting about you, too is that to see you and know you and know about you-- i've just met you-- but i was excited about meeting you because you have a persona. it's size, it's the way your hair is, it's the color of your complexion, it's the way you dress, it is a sense of -- and then to put that to another place, mississippi. and this young woman, young girl so influenced by literature that it infuses her with dreams of what became your reality. >> rosereality. >> that's the wonderful things

about books. well, you're from north carolina, too. we were talking about this earlier. >> rose: southern connections. >> the bookmobile coming through. >> rose: it defined my life. the chance that i saw -- i got in that bookmobile, walk in there as a kid this high and i would take a book and that book would transform my aspirations for what was outside the world i lived in of a town of a hundred people of where i could be and how i could go and find a place to stand. >> well,s what the novel always has to teach us and it's something we need to remember in a day of loudly shouting media. it was why novels were so loved in the 19th century because it was the first time people only went maybe ten miles from their homes in their entire life and when the first nols came out people were overjoyed. "robinson crusoe" you could be on a desert island. you could be with french nobility and they just enlarged people's experience in such a profound way. >> rose: and late we are

hemingway you could be at sea. >> you could be at sea. you could be anywhere. you could be in space. >> rose: but it always has the question of life and the reality of life. this is what "vanity fair" said about you. "she is on intimate terms with the human struggle to craft some kind of meaning. some kind of beauty from the brutal inevitability of death." does that resonate with you? >> i think that resonates with every artist. every painter we saw down stairs today in the frick felt exactly the same way. >> rose: meaning i have to create because in the end there is the inevitability of death? >> meaning that art is a still point, a small oasis that gives us a peres pit from death. it's a bit of eternity it's a quiet breathing space where

death doesn't exist. >> rose: has the writer's life lived up to your hopes, dreams -- >> to my wildest dreams. better, happier, yes. >> rose: so what does that mean? what is the writer's life that is so satisfying for you? >> well, to be able to daydream all day. to be able to -- writing a book is one level deeper than reading a book. as much fun as it is to read a book, writing a book is one level deeper than that. so it's hard at times, hard going, but when it's good and going well there's nothing like it. >> roseit. >> rose: when you look ahead now, take this character, you want readers to walk away from this book, "the tkpweld finch" and feel what? and experience what?

and say what? >> well, first of all i want them to have had some of the experience of happiness that i had while i was writing it. i want to first and foremost it should be fun. i want it to be a fun adventure. but there are also philosophical questions in this book, big questions and things that i -- that's something that a novel is actually very good at doing that no other art form is quite as good at doing as the novel is treating big questions about life like the ones we were just talking about in a very kind of light as air way. not a dry way. you're infused with a certain way of being and a certain way of seeing things. very effortlessly. >> rose: exactly. it's not pedantic, it's not lecturing, it's basically experiencing getting you there. >> it's experiential.

>> rose: back to your personality. this is the "guardian" 20 years ago about you. i love this. "she was a hard drinking southerner who lived alone with her congress teal and her pug. she bought her clothes from gap kids yet she could recite great swaths of poetry and even short stories by heart." t.s. elliot and edgar allen poe mostly. "she was a catholic convert, apparently sworn to celibacy with a taste for repressed gothic ghost stories." was that you? >> people write what they want to write. >> rose: are you flattered by that or taken aback by that? >> it's always interesting to see -- >> rose: hard drinking southerner? >> it's always interesting to see yourself the way other people see you. it's interesting -- >> rose: but what is true about -- >> go ahead. >> rose: what is true about this is that you can recite great swathes of poetry and

passages from great literature because they meant something to you. >> they did. and when i was a child i used to copy out things again and again and again which is how i did memorize things and commit them to. >> rose: >> rose: by copying them? >> by copying them down. even if i'm in the doctor's office waiting to see -- and if i'm bored i'll recite "sailing to byzantium." to myself. >> rose: recite it for me. >> that is no country for old men, the young in one another's arms, the birds in the trees, the dying generations at their song, the salmon falls, the mackerel crowded seas -- something something command all summer long. whatever is begotten born and dies, caught in that sensual music, all neglect, monuments of unaging intellect. an aged man is but a paltry thing, a taerted coat upon a

stick unless soul clap its hands and sing and louder sing for every at ther in its mortal dress and there is no singing school save studying month kwraouplts of its own magnificents and therefore i have sailed the seas and come to the holy city of by zandt yum. >> rose: my god that's good. (laughs) it's good. it's really good. >> even though i forgot the line. >> rose: it doesn't matter. bizant yum. you got 90% of it. but there's also about you and we've become enchanted with the persona who touch us by their art, whether it's picasso painting or you writing a novel or other people on stage for example. do you like the mystery about you that she's this reclusive character who writes these novels and has this amazing ability to bring together in her

characters danger his historical reference, all of that? >> what's important for me as writer is solitude. a lot of what -- it's not so much reclusiveness as just a need to be alone when i work. i'm -- a friend of mine calls me a hermit about town. which is -- i mean, i'm not really reclusive at all, i just -- when i am working i am -- i do need to spend a lot of time alone and it requires -- a life spent at one's desk is a life alone. >> rose: and it is not easy. writing is not easy. >> no, it's not easy. nothing worthwhile is easy. >> rose: what was for this, this book, was there a moment in the process of this that made

you say "i've got it"? was it the opening scene? was it a character? was it the painting? >> i think it was the -- i think it was oddly that trip to las vegas which made me see all sorts of things about about fate and chance and gambling and the movement of money in relation to art and dirty none relation to art because wherever there's been art there's always been dirty money around it. so it was las vegas that made it come together. >> rose: what do you mean by dirty money? >> i mean that painting paintine sold, traded in all sorts of dodgy shady ways. >> rose: they don't know where the money comes from, you don't know what happens to them. >> rose: . >> you don't know the provenance, sometimes you don't ask many questions. >> rose: are you a collector at all? >> i am not a collector. i wouldn't call myself a collector --

>> rose: you care. >> but i have some paintings that i like and i'm very found of. >> rose: so what's the role of punch when you're on this farm in virginia? >> the role of punch is my constant companion. >> rose: there at every moment? >> always there and always reminds me when it's time to go have lunch. he'll come in and tell me -- >> rose: or to go out. >> or to go out. >> rose: it's comforting to have that presence. >> absolutely. and i have a cat, too, sadie, who spends a lot of time with me. >> rose: how do sadie and punch get along? >> sadie is a bit scared of him because she's a lot bigger than he is. >> rose: that right? >> yes, she's a tough lady. >> rose: that often happens. the interesting thing you said to me that i've read that you have said which i didn't quite understand is you talked about density and speed. you've said i think that you look for density and speed. what does that mean? >> with a big book like mine you're building a really big heavy article but you want it to go fast. you want the reader's experience

of it to be fast and you want there to be detail in it. you want to see the quality of the shadows, the paintings on the walls, the tone of people's voice. you want to give the illusion of reality which is density so you're packing information in there but you want it to go fast at the same time. >> rose: how do you do that? >> it's a lot of work. >> rose: do you edit much yourself? >> yes. >> rose: do you get to the end before you -- and then go back or do you have to shape and make sure every chapter is just where you want it to be before you can leave it? >> it's both and both. sometimes a chapter will be just where i want to be before i leave it and i must go back and change it but a writer has a wonderful metaphor for chit is writing a book is -- you know when you fold egg whites into a souffle, you have your story but you keep sort of folding more information into it to sort of bring it up to where it needs to be. sometimes the consistency is not

right and you know you need to lift it up a bit. it's a good metaphor for the process. >> rose: what is it about having teenagers as protagonists. >> there's a great sense of possibility and fun. they're coming into the world for the first time. they're figuring out themselves, figuring out their relationship to the world and the reader gets to figure that out out with them. >> people ask the question about novelists. if it's a female novelist they'll say how did you find the voice for a male protagonist. here you have a teenager protagonist who happens to be a young boy. was the voice there at all? did you have to search for it or did you know it? >> the voice was always there for me from the beginning. i was actually a mimic when i was a child. i had a gift for mimicking my teachers which was much admired in school. that's a good gift to have as a child.

>> rose: by fellow students or the teacher? >> not by the teacher. not by the teacher but by other students and i -- i am able to people up other people's voices very easily and it's a skill that's stood me in good said the as a writer. >> i've often believed there was an indication of superior intelligence myself i have. i do. i really do. it's like perfect pitch or it's like the capacity to hear well. this is about 800 pages. how much is it? >> it's about 800 pages. >> rose: (laughs) is that a noor mall length for you? >> it is about, yes. >> rose: it takes 800 pages to write a story? >> there's several stories. this is the story of an entire life told in three parts so you're going on a ten year's journey here. >> rose: when you were at bennington you knew there was

nothing you could possibly do in life than write? >> actually for a while i wanted to be a parent. >> rose: oh, this comes full circle, doesn't it? >> i wanted to be a painter but i wasn't good enough. i also wanted to be a classical scholar but i wasn't good if you have at that either. so it's good i was able to write. that i was that -- >> rose: oh, you thought about being a classical scholar? but i don't think -- i don't want to think of writing as a second choice for you. >> it wasn't. it wasn't a second choice. >> rose: in other words writing was where you belong but you had to get there. >> exactly. i didn't discover myself as a writer until i started writing a novel because writing short stories wasn't quite right for me and i knew it wasn't. once i started writing a novel i thought, oh, this is it. this is my form, this is what i do. >> rose: the conflict in syria has produced the world's second-largest refugee population. more than 2.3 million of these

refugees are living across the region in countries like jordan, turkey, lebanon and iraq. according to unicef, an estimated 865,000 are children. the crisis has become a harsh reminder of the human toll of the fighting. joining me now linsey addario of the "new york times." she has documented their plight through her photographs. i'm pleased to have her back on this program. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: talk first about these refugee camps before you see what we saw. >> i think the important thing also is to realize that a lot of these refugees are not living in camps. only 30% are in camps. the rest are urban refugees. so the camps in turkey, the conditions vary. in the beginning the first i went was in april and the conditions were really tough people were fighting, there are riots over bread. w.f.p. were doing everything they could to distribute bread

everyday but there were riots. even to photograph there, photographers were getting beaten up and their cameras smashed. now it's much more organized. it's almost like a city. it has its main street, shops, it has everything, really. hospitals, schools. in turkey the camps are very organized, also the refugees are well provided by for. the issue the refugees who are not in camps. the biggest number of refugees is in lebanon, for example. and lebanon is averse to having refugee camps so you see a situation where refugees are living in factories, they're living in the shells of schools. they're living in chicken coops. they're living in places that are unbelievable. they're living below bakeries so the pouring out of the walls. >> rose: what drives you to do this? >> i think it's important. i think that people should see what's happening i think in a case like syria and any other circumstance i would be there. i would go there and cover the

war. but it's got on the a point where so many journalists are getting kidnapped that i don't think it would be fair to my family or anyone else to get kidnapped for a third time so i decided to cover it by covering the humanitarian crisis around syria and the best way for me to do that was to cover the refugees. >> rose: you'll go anywhere for the moment you get the picture. >> yeah, yeah, of course. >> rose: because you're documenting history. >> of course. there are times where it's scary. i've been -- recently i was in turkey covering -- and one of the hardest pictures to get is actually the href refugees streaming across the border because they come in the middle of the night. they don't want to be seen. many host countries have closed their borders so they have to comedies cretely. but as a photographer it's a dramatic image. you know it will bring the issue home. i think 120,000 syrians are pouring out of syria every month. those numbers are incredible.

but i wanted to get that scene in turkey so i went to the border and heard there was one place and it's a smuggler's village and smugglers don't want photographers hanging around and every half hour a guy would come to me and say "i'm going to kill you, get out of here." another guy said he was going to pull a knife on me. so i had to make a decision, do i get this picture or go? so i kept coming back and keeping i cameras in my bag and i waited and there were no syrians coming out in the day and some guy came up to me and said "just wait until dark. hang out here, don't go." the minute darkness fell it was this incredible exodus of sere krapbs and it was unbelievable. hundreds came in the dark. >> let's look at some of these so we understand. let's go to the first image. describe what i see. >> i was sitting in london and i saw images coming over the wire of syrians pouring into iraq. it was the first time -- i think there were 10,000 refugees that came in one day.

i called my editor at the "new york times" and i have to say the "new york times" has been incredible about supportin supps project and i called him and said i have to get there. and i have a two-year-old now. i said what am i going to do? you can't get on the next plane anymore, you know? so he said go for it. get over there. >> rose: what about the two-year-old? >> my husband is fabulous. so i got on the next plane and it was happening, the numbers were less and they diverted the original scene which was over a foot bridge to this valley in between syria and iraq. and it was the scene that was breathtaking. you see them weaving through the valley and coming up into iraq. >> rose: image two. what is this? >> this is at that w.f.p. bread distribution i talked to earlier. so the first time i went there were riots and this is coming out of the bread distribution and you see the men climbing the fence trying to get in and it

was an incredible scene of desperation. >> rose: and the woman with the child behind her. >> she had just gotten her bread and she's coming out. >> rose: the next one is -- >> this is again at a bread distribution. this is inside. so basically i had to go back three times to get this picture because the first two times i was chased out by the rioters. and the third time i went in and the man who had been working there since the camp opened he had to make sure everyone was calm enough and i finally was able to get the picture. but one thing that's important as a photographer is that you have to show the basic thing that refugees are trying to get, food, water, shelter. >> rose: right. those essentials they need. next one? >> the next one this is a family driving into the camp for the first time. so it's basically a woman showing her son their new home and i was inside the camp looking for new arrivals. usually there's a place they

come and settle down. >> rose: and what are the children like? are their faces different? >> their faces are traumatized, a lot of them in jordan have seen a lot. they've come out of serious fighting, bombing, they're violent. when i first went in april they were throwing rocks nonstop. most of the children are not in school. so now you have syrian children who have missed two three years of school. that's a huge amount. and each host country treating the refugees different in terms of education so i think in the beginning the interesting thing about the refugees is when they first started coming they thought their situation was temporary and so many of them didn't worry about putting their kids in school and didn't worry about learning the local language if it wasn't arabic. and now they realize that the war is almost -- it's three years and they might be there for a long time. >> rose: next image?

>> this is the scene in turkey where the -- the smugglers village. these are people as they're streaming out and this is a family that basically just walked out and they're standing on the side of the road waiting for someone to pick them up. >> rose: not knowing what their next day is going to be like. >> no. >> rose: nothing. >> and everything they own is right there with them. >> a lot of times they're terrified, traumatized, they don't want to be photographed. >> rose: they worry somebody will see it. >> assad is still in power and the main thing i've struggled with, i've worked on this story all year. i've made eight trips and every time i go to photographic not have my cameras out, i have to go, introduce myself, explain the project, explain why it's important. explain why it's important people understand what they're going through and it takes a long time. >> rose: next slide. >> rose: so this is an interesting scene. we were working on the education story for syrian children and i went to this refugee camp and there was a young girl on the top right with the pink sleeves and she was teaching the other

refugee children what she learned in school because so many of them weren't going to school. and so she was sitting there holding an impromptu class and i thought that was so telling. >> rose: wow. >> i want to show you this video. this is clarissa ward. >> back in syria, she dreamed of being a teacher but she no longer goes to school. like many refugee children, she now spends her days working in the fields because her family needs the money. on this day, she and other girls from the camp were picking beans. it's menial work done by women and children. at the end of a back-breaking day of work, these girls will take home less than $5 each. it's not if you have for one person to live on and if many families here it's the only source of income. her family fled syria for lebanon four months ago. "i miss school and my teachers" she told us. "i miss my home.

her father says he knows how important school is but that he has to send his children to work because he has no job so it must be hard for you to send your children to the fields when you value education as much as you do. of course. he said. >> so sad. >> rose: it's sad and it's -- of course they know. it's the sense of almost in their eyes a shame they can't provide for their children. >> exactly. and these are arab men and they're very proud and they've lost their jobs. syrians -- these people are not people who have come from small villages. these are educated -- college educated people who come from homes and lives that they've built over years so they've lost everything. >> rose: and it gets worse. >> i'd like to think it gets better but every time i go it seems people are settling in even more.

people are building concrete and marble fountains in the refugee camps. >> rose: when will you go back? >> i want to go back soon because i saw pictures out of jordan of people coming across and i would like to keep up the project over this year. >> rose: tell us the project one more time? >> it's just documenting i've been the lebanon, jordan, turkey, syria and iraq. i went once into syria. >> rose: thank you. it's always goods to see you. >> thank you for having me. >> rose: thank you for joining us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications

captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

a kqed television production. ♪ like sort of old fisherman's wharf. it reminds me of old san francisco. >> the calories, the cholesterol. >> it's like an adventure. >> oatmeal with a touch of wet dog. >> i did. inhaled it. >>