Everyone who is not happy must be shot.

More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.

Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.

A dead man is the worst enemy alive, I thought. You can't alter his power over you. You can't alter what you love or owe. And it's too late to ask him for his absolution. He has beaten you all ways.

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

Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.

I mean, you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now?