I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a model for the beauty of language.

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

He thinks he's happy but it's just a nerve cell in his brain that's getting too much stimulation or too little stimulation.

Everything I've stated may prove to be total poppycock.... Perhaps time will tell. Perhaps time will do nothing of the kind.

I was never either pro-culture or counter-culture. I was in a kind of middle state.

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

It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel is a big one, but I don't know.