Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

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.

Planning to write is not writing.

A novelist is a person who lives in other people's skins.

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

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.