I wanted to use what I was, to be what I was born to be - not to have a 'career', but to be that straightforward obvious unmistakable animal, a writer.

Fiction does not invent out of a vacuum, but it invents; and what it invents is, first, the fabric and cadence of language, and then a slant of idea that sails out of these as a fin lifts from the sea.

What I felt then I feel now: the inexorable, unchanging interior hum of doubt and hope.

It is true that money attracts; but much money repels.

Comedy springs from the ludicrous; but the ludicrous is stuck in the muck of reality, resolutely hostile to what is impossible.

In books, as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: its the next work, still to be written, that offers the second chance.

Death persecutes before it executes.