it still astounds me, after forty years, that there is no good bread between Chicago and San Francisco.

I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was.

My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that's basically a conservative view of life.

Trollope wrote so many novels and other works that they tend to crowd each other out.

When people leave, they always seem to scoop themselves out of you.

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.

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.