I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.

I write for a certain sphere of readers in the United States who on average watch seven and a half hours of multichannel television per day.

Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?" - from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird

And really the purpose of art - for me, fiction - is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might have had, or might still have.

Homelessness is a part of our American system. There should be nothing wrong with this condition as long as the individual is not sentenced to unnecessary suffering and punishment.

Photography was the first foreign language of my artistic expression.

I don't fret over lost time - I can always use the situations in a novel.