You don't fight to protect warships or old men. Like the book says, you fight to save your civilization. And so often it seems that civilization is composed mainly of the things women and children want.

A nation becomes what its young people read in their youth. Its ideals are fashioned then, its goals strongly determined.

I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.

All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall.

I don’t know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance. I could be Jewish; I could be part Negro; I could be Irish; I could be Russian. I am spiritually a mix anyway, but I did have a solid childhood fortunately, because of some wonderful women who brought me up. I never had a father or a man in the house, and that was a loss...

If your book doesn't keep you up nights when you are writing it, it won't keep anyone up nights reading it.

Many people who want to be writers don't really want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print.