First-book novelists and storywriters haven't yet failed and so it's easier to publish them - you can gamble on a success. Whereas someone who has written four books that are highly literary and demanding and require you as a reader. They may not be republished.

I don't think the world is particularly responsive to - our world, the culture we are in, to art right now.

Good art is a form of prayer. It's a way to say what is not sayable.

When I am writing a novel I try not to read great prose stylists into which I will fall.

The people who make reality are angry peasants with old cannon shells wired together, an anti-vehicle device.

The best defense is a good story.

I love thrillers. I would even read certain science fiction, although I haven't been a devotee for many years.