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

…There are times when something is asked of us, and we find we must do it. There is no calculation involved, no measure of the necessity of the thing itself, the action that must be performed. There is simply an acknowledgment that we will do the thing in question, and then the thing is done, often at considerable personal cost. " "What goes into these decisions? What tiny factors, invisible, in the jutting edges of personality and circumstance, contribute to this inevitability?

I don't read books for pleasure, but in desperation.

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.

If Americans are to read something that is difficult, they will only do so supposing they will be admired for having done it.

I'd say writing is easier for me now than it once was, but I do less of it.

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.