It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is—an intense form of thought.

The term itself--my life--is a desperate overstatement.

Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.

You have to break through the structure of your own stonework habit just to make yourself listen.

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

A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.

I slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts.