They all settled into being the kind of friends when they heard from each other.... or when they occasionally got together. And when they were not in touch, they did not think of one another.

My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me—don’t make me a category before you get to know me!

For most of my life, when I've finished the book I'm writing, there've always been as many as two or three other novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had.

Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.

The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.

I have lots of notebooks around, because one great advantage of writing by hand-in addition to how much it slows you down-is that it makes me write at the speed that I feel I should be composing, rather than faster than I can think, which is what happens to me on any keyboard.

I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.