I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.

If you can't love crudeness, how can you truly love mankind?

Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them.

More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.

I'm old-fashioned, a storyteller. I'm not an analyst and I'm not an intellectual.

There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep.

He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.