As technology advances in complexity and scope, fear becomes more primitive.

A mystery novel localizes the awesome force of the real death outside the book, winds it tightly in a plot.

Writers, some of us, may tend to see things before other people do, things that are right there but aren't noticed in the way that a writer might notice.

There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists...Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.

Brilliant people never think of the lives they smash, being brilliant.

People stress the violence. That's the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there's a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There's a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies strewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there's a satisfaction to the game that can't be duplicated. There's a harmony.

Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?' What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing