Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan and a course laid out.

The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs.

...ultimately it come down to, are you making or are you destroying? If you try very hard to create ways of living, create dreams of what is possible, then you win. If you don't, you may make a fortune in ten years, but you're not going to be read in twenty years, and that's that.

We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.

People will tell you that writing is too difficult, that it's impossible to get your work published, that you might as well hang yourself. Meanwhile, they'll keep writing and you'll have hanged yourself.

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.

I cannot believe such monstrous energy of grief can lead to nothing!