As belief shrinks from the world, it is more necessary than ever that someone believe. Wild-eyed men in caves. Nuns in black. Monks who do not speak. We are left to believe. Fools, children. Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes.

In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending.

I was always younger than anyone around me. One day it began to change.

In the American soul there is a lonely individual standing in a vast landscape.

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

That's the world out there, little green apples and infectious disease.

I'm very concerned with questions of language. This is what I think of when I think of myself as a writer: I'm someone who writes sentences and paragraphs. I think of the sentence - not only what it shares but, in a sense, what it looks like. I like to match words not only in a way that convey a meaning, possibly an indirect meaning, but even at times words that have a kind of visual correspondence.