Writing is the act of saying "I," of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying "listen to me, see it my way, change your mind."

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it

If you want to understand what you're thinking, you kind of have to work it through and write it. And the only way to work it through, for me, is to write it.

It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and the market was steady and the G.N.P. high and a great many articulate people seemed to have a sense of high social purpose and it might have been a spring of brave hopes and national promise, but it was not, and more and more people had the uneasy apprehension that it was not.

any compulsion tries to justify itself.

When you're writing fiction, you don't have notes necessarily. You don't carve it, it's not like a piece of sculpture, it's more like water color.

I lead a very conventional life.