My definition of a decent society is one that first of all takes care of its losers, and protects its weak.

There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.

I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.

By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way.

It's death, that's what I'm suffering from. The systematic encroachment of the big D.

America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember.

But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy.