Dan suggested to Owen and me that we were better off to not involve ourselves with Hester. How true! But how we wanted to be involved in the thrilling real-life sleaziness that we suspected Hester was in the thick-of. We were in a phase, through television and the movies, of living only vicariously. Even faintly sordid silliness excited us if it put us in contact with love.

You can't say you're going to ban something in the name of good taste, because then you have directed someone to play the role of good-taste police. We - Americans - permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it.

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

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

If you asked me one day, I might say, "Well, sometimes I feel a little bit religious." If you asked me another day, I'd just say flat out, "No."

If I had to be anything," he told her, "I'd probably be a socialist, but I don't want to be anything.

I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there.