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

In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices

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

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

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

Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form

In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75