People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night.

Any assault on the borders of perception is going to seem rash at first.

Being called a 'bad citizen' is a compliment to a novelist, at least to my mind. That's exactly what we ought to do.

Men with secrets tend to be drawn to each other, not because they want to share what they know but because they need the company of the like-minded, the fellow afflicted.

I don’t want your candor. I want your soul in a silver thimble.

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

A novel determines its own size and shape and I've never tried to stretch an idea beyond the frame and structure it seemed to require.