In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act.

When you try to unravel something you've written, you belittle it in a way. It was created as a mystery.

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.

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.

Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.

I think fiction comes from everything you've ever done, and said, and dreamed, and imagined. It comes from everything you've read and haven't read... I think my work comes out of the culture of the world around me. I think that's where my language comes from.

In a crisis the true facts are whatever other people say they are.