Our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

You come to the United States not knowing what to expect. Then all your worst prejudices are confirmed.

You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me.

Another reason I think the novel will survive is that the reader has to work in a novel. In a film, you are presented with someone else's imagination exactly bodied out. The marvelous thing about a novel is that every reader will imagine even the very simplest sentence slightly differently.

If anything might hurt her, silence would; and I wanted to hurt her.

Art's cruel. You can get away with murder with words. But a picture is like a window straight through to your inmost heart.