Because one has written other books does not mean the next becomes any easier.

The eleventh commandment of a motion picture negotiation: Thou shalt not take less than thy last deal.

Novels do take charge of the writer, and the writer is basically a kind of sheepdog just trying to keep things on track.

New York is at once cosmopolitan and parochial, a compendium of sentimental certainties. It is in fact the most sentimental of the world's great cities - in its self-congratulation a kind of San Francisco of the East.

I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge.

The narrative was too constricted; it was like a fetus strangling on its own umbilical cord.

I’ve always thought a novelist only has one character and that is himself or herself.