The three most important documents a free society gives are a birth certificate, a passport, and a library card.

I've known several cases of writers who decide to write about something and they research the hell out of it and when they're ready to write, they can't move because they are so burdened. I start writing. Whatever I need somehow comes to hand.

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

Time seems to me a drift, a shifting of sand. And my mind is shifting with it. I am wearing away.

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.

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

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