When I was a kid I ate sports books up, like "Winners Never Quit" by Phil Pepe. That was like my bible.

TV was the boogey man when I was growing up. Video games are the boogey man now. The novel was once a boogey man. Books about lowborn people doing lowborn things were once considered a real assault on people's morals. Maybe some day video games will be looked on as a good thing, but personally I don't see it.

I think [kids] enjoy reading, but it's a different world now. There are a lot of competitors for the imaginative attention.

The happiest moment of my life was probably when my daughter was born.

I don't want to know what happens in any movie that I go to see.

I think it was W.H. Auden who said he was lucky that his first favorite poet was Thomas Hardy, who was a good but not a great poet, because if you are exposed to the greats too soon it can just squash you as a writer.

I'm not going to give up. I can't give up. Not as long as the truth is out there.