Cats gotta scratch. Dogs gotta bite. I gotta write.

I've created a narrative of the world. I live in the world - tenuously, most times. I've avoided the digital world.

When I was a kid, Eisenhower had been President forever, and all of a sudden, everything in the world was all about Jack Kennedy. I was 12, interested in politics; my father was from Massachusetts, had an accent like Kennedy.

I'm grateful for the life I have. I lived bad for many years, and I've got a great life now. I've got the kind of life people only dream about.

I don't have children. I serve the world and I serve God by living as deep within my work as I can, reveling in the language of other times and putting it forth for the world.

I got a woman I'm loyal to above all things, above my career. She's profound to me. I'm quiet. I live in Kansas City. I work.

It's all sex for me. Politics is sex. Race is sex. It's the novel. It's the novel!