Grant us safe lodging, and holy rest,” Mrs. Grogan was saying, “and peace at last.” Amen, thought Wilbur Larch, the Saint of St. Cloud’s, who was seventy-something, and an ether addict, and who felt that he’d come a long way and still had a long way to go.

We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it - and reward it in all manner of ways.

If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.

It is much easier to be flexible about where a story begins than it ever was for me to change my mind about where and how a story ended.

There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.

Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.

I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.