Plot a murder, you're saying. But every plot is a murder in effect. To plot is to die, whether we know it or not.

In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending. So for much of the period in which I'm writing, I'm waiting to understand what's going to happen next, and how and where it's going to happen. In some cases, fairly early in the process, I do know how a book will end. But most of the time, not at all, and in this particular case, many questions are still unanswered, even though I've been working for months.

I would never write in response to what I believe the public wanted or needed.

Not long ago, a novelist could believe he could have an effect on our consciousness of terror. Today, the men who shape and inflence human consciousness are the terrorists.

California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.

Just because it's on the radio doesn't mean we have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses.

Technology is lust removed from nature.