A few places are especially conducive to inspiration - automobiles, church - public places. I plotted Couples almost entirely in church - little shivers and urgencies I would note down on the program, and carry down to the office Monday.

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.

In a democracy in the 20th and 21st century, if you can't base your fiction upon ordinary people and the issues that engage them, then you are reduced to writing about spectacular unreal people. You know, James Bond or something, and you cook up adventures.

The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies.

People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren't people any more, they're just ssoul-less sheep.