If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate.

... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.

It's not a pretty world, Papa.' 'I've noticed,' my father said softly.

In Russia I went to a great yeshiva, and in America I work in a carnival.

I'm constantly revising. Once the book is written and typed, I go through the entire draft again.

I'm not altogether certain that a fundamentalism of necessity has to argue that it is the only reading of the human experience in order to stay alive.

I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity.