Most novels I come across have all the excitement of a long trip on a bus with a sensitive glee club. Yammer and chat.

I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.

I wake my wife up at 3 a.m. and say, "Listen to this!"

A writers job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.

The point is to strip down, get protestant, then even more naked. Walk over scorched bricks to find your own soul. Your heart a searching dog in the rubble.

I never pulled a loaded pistol on anybody, but it got around that I did. It got turned into lore. It's a myth. There's so much bad gun stuff.

Literature is the history of the soul.