History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.

Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth.

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.

I like commas. I detest semi-colons — I don’t think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn’t need them, they were fly-specks on the page.

It may be that the most avid readers of new fiction in America today are film producers, an indication of the trouble were in.

We dress them [children] in the presumptions of the world. They are the bright small face of hope. They are the last belief we have, the belief in making them believe.