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

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

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

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

If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.

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!

Horror would not annoy a soldier any more than the sight of a hammer annoys a carpenter. It is sentimental to pretend that horror is not the tool of the soldier, just as the hammer is the tool of the carpenter. We live off death and the threat of death and we must take it calmly and use it well.... Eventually I came to enjoy killing, as a pianist enjoys the Czerny which keeps his fingers limber for the Beethoven.