Writing is a concentrated form of thinking...a young writer sees that with words he can place himself more clearly into the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions.

I think literature has lost it's power. Great novels continue to be written, but they are no longer changing the world.

There were moments when she wasn't talking so much as fading into time, dropping back into some funnelled stretch of recent past.

For most people, there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.

When I work I have a sculptor's sense of the shape of the words I'm making. I use a machine with larger than average letters: the bigger the better.

I didn’t do anything. I don’t have an explanation, I don’t know why I wanted to write. I did some short stories at that time, but very infrequently. I quit my job just to quit. I didn’t quit my job to write fiction. I just didn’t want to work anymore

Some nights I need to be held. Tonight I'm a listener. So nice to lie in rumpled sheets and listen. Cover me with words.