I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young

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

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

The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.

You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer

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.

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.