I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

Writing is like a contact sport, like football. Why do kids play football? They can get hurt on any play, can't they? Yet they can't wait until Saturday comes around so they can play on the high school team, or the college team, and get smashed around. Writing is like that. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it!

My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have

In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody

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

My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever

Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own