Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.

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

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

I look at everything. God gave me eyes and I look at women and men and subway excavations and moving pictures and the little flowers of the field. I casually inspect the universe.

I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it

My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever

An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself.