Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story; rumors don't care what's true.

The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.

I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.

I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.

The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.

A novel is a piece of architecture. It's not random wallowings or confessional diaries. It's a building-it has to have walls and floors and the bathrooms have to work.

I am not attracted to writers by style. What style do Dickens, Grass, and Vonnegut have in common? How silly! I am attracted to what makes them angry, what makes them passionate, what outrages them, what they applaud and find sympathetic in human beings and what they detest about human beings, too. They are writers of great emotional range.