I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.

The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees.

You ought to be able to discover something from your stories. If you don't, probably nobody else will.

...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.

There are some of us who have to pay for our faith every step of the way and who have to work out dramatically what it would be like without it and if being without it would be ultimately possible or not.

A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.

It's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.