Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.

At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded.

There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.

If football players were armed with guns, there wouldn't be stadiums large enough to hold the crowds.

Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.

Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.

Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.