The writer cultivates, extends, raises and inflates his imagination, sure that this is his destiny, his usefulness, his contribution to the understanding of good and evil. As he inflates his imagination he inflates his capacity for evil.

Sometimes the easiest-seeming stories to a reader are the hardest kind to write.

Without a reader, I cannot write. It's like a kiss: they cannot be done alone.

I've been homesick for countries I've never been, and longed to be where I couldn't be.

People look for morals in fiction because there has always been a confusion between fiction and philosophy.

How can we describe the most exalted experience of our physical lives [sex], as if-jack, wrench, hubcap, and nuts-we were describing the changing of a flat tire?

Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego.