If you look at the best-seller list, it is mostly thrillers. Very few books attempt to create an image of the life we live. I knew there were writers who wore tweed coats and lived in Connecticut and somehow made a living, and that's what I aimed to do. I've tried to write as well as I can with books that say something to any reader.

It is not enough for a story to flow. It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts.

The breezes taste Of apple peel. The air is full Of smells to feel- Ripe fruit, old footballs, Burning brush, New books, erasers, Chalk, and such. The bee, his hive, Well-honeyed hum, And Mother cuts Chrysanthemums. Like plates washed clean With suds, the days Are polished with A morning haze.

You imagine a reader and try to keep the reader interested. That's storytelling. You also hope to reward the reader with a sense of a completed design, that somebody is in charge, and that while life is pointless, the book isn't pointless. The author knows where he is going. That's form.

We all begin life as parasites within the mother, and writers begin their existence imitatively, within the body of letters.

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.

...hate suits him better than forgiveness. Immersed in hate, he doesn't have to do anything; he can be paralyzed, and the rigidty of hatred makes a kind of shelter for him.