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.

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.

I am curious about grownups, not children.

Banks introduced the installment plan. The disappearance of cash and the coming of the credit card changed the shape of life in the United States.

It seems that what I really want is a drug that will increase my consciousness of others, not myself.

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

I was pushing myself to extremes in order to discover my many selves.