I'm not a philosopher. I am the next thing to a jock, which is a novelist.

The importance to the world of what we scribblers write is in doubt, I would think.

I always write the best that I can. And I won't publish it until I have done it right.

People do not read, by and large. They watch television.

When you are writing a character, what the character says is obviously crucial. But what the character doesn't say is absolutely as important as his words.

Let's look at what the books are that are being produced. More and more they are being made like movies. To sell. They are being tested out.

We are herding the young in that direction so that they are not sitting still and contemplating, Goddamn it, a page of exquisite prose by Charles Dickens, which is filled with rage about poverty and the need of a household to survive. That's not in the table for consideration now. And people don't understand that beautiful rage of Dickens because they don't share it. They haven't got time to worry about an oppressed culture, a subclass.