I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence.

I've always felt that my subject was living in dangerous times.

There is a world inside the world.

The writer is driven by his conviction that some truths aren't arrived at so easily, that life is still full of mystery, that it might be better for you, Dear Reader, if you went back to the Living section of your newspaper because this is the dying section and you don't really want to be here.

When I work I have a sculptor's sense of the shape of the words I'm making. I use a machine with larger than average letters: the bigger the better.

Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the sombre renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings.

I am not particularly distressed by the state of fiction or the role of the writer. The more marginal, perhaps ultimately the more trenchant and observant and finally necessary he'll become.