I have a different purpose in writing each novel. Some of them seem more similar than others, but the purposes are always different.

It is at the heart of our human enterprise, that is to say, at the heart of society, to allow consensus a power it ought not to have.

Americans are genuinely and profoundly anti-intellectual. They are especially so in their pleasure-seeking, which is epically banal.

That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse!

I have a different purpose in writing each novel. Some of them seem more similar than others, but the purposes are always different.

A book can just be a description of a stick being snapped in half. If the reader is brought to feel the plight of the stick, well, you can imagine what that would be like.

In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another.