Where’s your sketch pad?” I asked. … “I gave that up,” Kay said. “I wasn’t very good, so I changed my major.” “To what?” “To pre-med, then psychology, then English lit, then history.” “I like a woman who knows what she wants.” Kay smiled. “So do I, but I don’t know any.

Other people, some other writers, will win certain accolades or sell in far greater numbers than me - and I'm a legitimate best-selling author - but I live and die for the work. That's thrilling to me. It's thrilling that I do for others what certain writers did for me when I was a kid.

I don't have a cellphone or a computer. I deliberately circumscribe my mental life within the periods that I write about, and the power of Perfidia is that it's the result of complete immersion. I was there for the two years that it took me to write that book.

Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.

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.

And the only forms of socialism in the world that were then getting results - malign ones, as it was - were the Fascist and Soviet republics. Fascism is a form of socialism - you rebuild the country, you find a scapegoat, and you go from there.

The novel is final form; it's the ultimate individual final form. Television and motion pictures never get there. You'd be fabulous to think that something you write is even going to be filmed. I give it the best shot of which I'm capable. But it's more a payday for me. And if I didn't have alimony and the full-time assistant.