I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.

When time passes, it's the people who knew you whom you want to see; they're the ones you can talk to. When enough time passes, what's it matter what they did to you?

wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.

We will often do anything to pretend that nothing is on our minds.

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

I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.

It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.