Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture, whether of cover cloth, glazed jacket, or flexible paperback.

Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.

My mother didn't raise me to be a critic, but I seem to have become one anyway.

Fraud makes the world go round.

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.

I write about, more or less, everything I can think of, that is I stretch my imagination as far as it'll go. I am kind of stuck in the middle as far as my life goes, and hence my imagination tends to zero in on things which are indeed in the middle. That is, I don't write about the very rich, who I scarcely know, or the very poor who I don't know very well either.

It's great to have an enemy. Sharpens your senses.