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.

My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever

All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.

I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?

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

In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that.

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