If you feel a bump on page one hundred, it may be you went off on page fifty.

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.

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

What we call fiction is the ancient way of knowing, the total discourse that antedates all the special vocabularies....Fiction is democratic, it reasserts the authority of the single mind to make and remake the world.

Banks and churches and courtrooms all depend on the appurtenances of theatre. On illusion. Banks, the illusion of stability and honourable dealings to the rot and corruption of capitalist exploitation. Churches the illusion of sacred sanctuary of purposes of pacifying social discontent. Courtrooms of course designed to promote the illusion of solemn justice. If there was true justice why would such trappings be necessary? Wouldn't a table and chairs and an ordinary room serve just as well?

We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy.

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