Another older writer that had a huge influence on me is Chekhov. More contemporarily, it's hard to say.

The novel has always been the form that incorporates other forms. For me, it has always been the ultimate medium.

Each of us, deep down, believes that the whole world issues from his own precious body, like images projected from a tiny slide onto an earth-sized screen. And then, deeper down, each of us knows he's wrong.

Baseball is a team game but, at the same time, it's a very lonely game: unlike in soccer or basketball, where players roam around, in baseball everyone has their little plot of the field to tend. When the action comes to you, the spotlight is on you but no one can help you.

I tended to write the book in these bursts of two or three months at a time. So I would know, or at least feel securely, that for the next few months I was at least going to have a few hours a day.

It was strange the way he loved her; a side long and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention.

Most writers, most books, you have no idea whether it was a dollar or a million dollars.