I thought of myself as a writer for years before I got around to writing anything.

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.

Facts are the images of history, just as images are the facts of fiction.

Longing, the hope for fulfillment, is the one unwavering passion of the world's commerce.

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. Sometimes you run over a drunk who's lain down and fallen asleep on the warm pavement. I mean, do you keep going, or what?

Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours.