When you're working well, you don't do research. Whatever you need comes to you.

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.

So that individuation may be compared to a pyramid in that it is only achieved by the placement of the top stone… The Jews, Ford said. They ain't like anyone else I know. There goes you theory up shits creek. He smiled.

I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative.

We make a mistake to condescend to the past as if it were preparatory to our own time.

I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had lost all its authority.

I've always felt, as a writer, that radicals are fascinating because they're relations, they have a place in the American family. They're the relatives everyone wishes would go away. They're the embarrassments to decorum and good taste.