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

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.

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

It is inconceivable to me that a million or three million or half a million human beings will think and feel precisely the same way on any single subject.

Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different.

Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship.

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