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

I get up around 6:30. I work from about 8:00 to 1:00, take a break for lunch, work again until about 5:00, and then go for a long walk and have dinner. Then, if my wife and I have no previous plans, we decide what to do for the evening.

Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.

There is in my work a very strong religious foreground and background. In the later work some of that tends to diminish, but it's certainly present in the early work.

No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate, that's the way the world is.

A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life.

I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it.