A writer decides to follow some ideas and not others for reasons that aren't always clear to him. It's often a matter of intuition.

He took pains to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized world-weariness and a tragic sense of history--the very things, he says, that are most natural to him.

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

A shrewd person would one day start a religion based on coincidence, if he hasn't already, and make a million.

Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail.

Eye contact was a delicate matter. A quarter second of a shared glance was a violation of agreements that made the city operational.

I never wanted to change the world. Norman Mailer wanted to, he set himself the task of changing the consciousness of our age. And I think he came pretty close, in the 1960s, to actually managing to do it. But me? No, no, I never wanted anything like that. I'm not Maileresque.