I can't imagine writing if I didn't have a reader. Any more than an actor can imagine acting without an audience.

We all survive more than we think we can.

It's hard to find a book that's safe to write. Because one always goes to dark or difficult places.

The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power's sake... but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy. It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by one's own rules.

Anything worth having has its price.

Time is the school in which we learn.

Another thing I need to do, when I'm near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it...Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're asleep right next to it.