I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.

I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.

Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.

It is amazing to me, now, how such wild imaginings and philosophies - inspired by a night charged with frights and calamities - made such perfectly good sense to Owen Meany and me, but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.

When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.

The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.

No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin - only four years older than I am - everything, or what little I could discover about him.