It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.'

Writers, some of us, may tend to see things before other people do, things that are right there but aren't noticed in the way that a writer might notice.

Everyone who does not live in Berlin lives in Brooklyn now.

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.

A mystery novel localizes the awesome force of the real death outside the book, winds it tightly in a plot.

War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.

People say great art is immortal. I say there's something mortal in it. It carries a glimpse of death.