It occurred to me that eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain.

When my head is in the typewriter the last thing on my mind is some imaginary reader. I don't have an audience; I have a set of standards.

There's a connection between the advances that are made in technology and the sense of primitive fear people develop in response to it.

The novel is the dream release, the suspension of reality that history needs to escape its own brutal confinements.

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

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

There came a time in every prolonged effort when he had a moment of near panic, or 'terror in a lonely place', the original semantic content of the word. The lonely place was his own mind.