It is impossible to fuse totally with a culture for which you feel a measure of antagonism.

Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.

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.

It is impossible to fuse totally with a culture for which you feel a measure of antagonism.

I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.

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

A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant.