A youthful American voice isn't particularly challenging - I've been a young American, and they're all around me. I can walk from my house to Barrington High School.

We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.

What a man knows hardly matters. It is what he does.

We have treatments for disturbed persons, Nicholas. But, at least for the time being, we have no treatment for disturbing persons.

You're a materialist, like all ignorant people. But your materialism doesn't make materialism true. Don't you know that? In the final summing up, it is spirit and dream, thought and love and act that matter.

My whole life experience feeds into my writing. I think that must be true for every writer. Clearly the Army and combat were major influences; just the same, you need to understand that many of the writers we have now couldn't load a revolver.

That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.