When I'm filling notebooks I'm trying to pin down what I'm really interested in and to find those details that are so hard to come by, details that I can look at and believe are right on the mark. Things which bring a novel to life. They can take a while to come.

I like men who have known the best and the worst, whose life has been anything but a smooth trip. Storms have battered them, they have lain, sometimes for months on end, becalmed. There is a residue even if they fail. It has not been all tinkling; there have been grand chords.

I'm a frotteur, someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible.

There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.

But that isn't my life. I have said many times I don't want to be considered one who once flew fighters. That's not who I am. I devoted the subsequent 50 years - more - to writing.

I like to write about certain things that if they are not written about are not going to exist.

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.