My advice is, do not try to inhabit another's soul. You have your own.

The days are stacked against what we think we are.

I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.

I had let my digust with teaching ruin my love of literature.

I can write anywhere.

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.

All artists as a type seem to suffer a great deal, but then so do miners.