I believe in plot, in development of character, in the effect of the passage of time, in a good story - better than something you might find in the newspaper. And I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.

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

I've always been slow but I'm even slower now. I'm more into the waiting, or I guess I'm more patient about the waiting.

Never confuse faith, or belief — of any kind — with something even remotely intellectual.

The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.

Sometimes that's a year, sometimes it's 18 months, where all I'm doing is taking notes. I'm reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is.

The object of war is to survive it.