When I went to first grade and the other children said that their fathers were farmers, I simply didn't believe them. I agreed in order to be polite, but in my heart I knew that those men were impostors, as farmers and as fathers, too. In my youthful estimation, Laurence Cook defined both categories. To really believe that others even existed in either category was to break the First Commandment.

I wrote the Dickens book because I loved Dickens, not because I felt a kinship with him, but after writing the book it seemed to me that there was at least one similarity between us and that was that Dickens loved to write and wrote with the ease and conviction of breathing. Me, too.

Vets do what doctors used to - diagnose the injury or the condition, patch it up as best they can and remind you that these things happen and that in life we are also in the midst of death.

We sort of read two or three big newspapers but we don't get the flavor of the local events, the local news as much.

English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.

A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.