As long as I tell the truth I feel that nobody can touch me.

its no surprise to me that anyone hardly tells the truth about how they feel. The smart ones keep to themselves for good reason. Why would you want to tell anyone anything that's dear to you? Even when you like them and want nothing more than to be closer to them? It's so painful to be next to someone you feel so strongly about and know you can't say the things you want to.

A great way to learn about your country is to leave it.

I'm just shallow and self-interested, and don't get out much because I'm afraid of real commitments.

All good writers inspire me as I have never thought I was any good. As far as a writer who made me think I could do it, it was Henry Miller. Not because I thought he was so simple that I reckoned I could pull it off as well, but it was his freedom and guts that really moved me to want to write all the time.

I write what I can. I think being able to write like Michael Connelly and have a character that goes from novel to novel, or to dramatize history like Vidal or Ellroy, or have an explosively inventive mind like Bulgakov, would be an incredible thing. I don't have that. I only have what I have.

I just work, to the exclusion of most other things. I rarely work in a frenzied manner, just kind of - if you take the beater that whips the icing or the eggs into shape - on the upper end of medium speed, that's kind of how I am about seven days a week.