Death will come in any case, and there is a long afterwards if the priests are right and nothing to fear if they are wrong.

One has no talent. I have no talent. It's just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.

I write about situations that are common, universal might be more correct, in which my characters are involved and from which only faith can redeem them, though often the actual manner of the redemption is not immediately clear. They sin, but there is no limit to God's mercy and because this is important, there is a difference between not confessing in fact, and the complacent and the pious may not realize it.

The world doesn't make any heroes anymore.

She mixes religion with desertion to make it sound noble.

The argument of danger only applies to those who live in relative safety.

With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed-he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog.