I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto.

I like old men. They can be wonderful bastards because they have nothing to lose. The only people who can be themselves are babies and old bastards.

The United States, democratic and various though it is, is not an easy country for a fiction-writer to enter: the slot between the fantastic and the drab seems too narrow.

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

A computer and a cat are somewhat alike - they both purr, and like to be stroked, and spend a lot of the day motionless. They also have secrets they don't necessarily share.

A cynic is a kind of romantic who has aged.

Writers take words seriously-perha ps the last professional class that does-and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors and careless typesetters and obtuse and malevolent reviewers into the lap of the ideal reader.