I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

What does it mean to be born? After we die, will it be the same thing as it was before we were born? Or a different kind of nothingness? Because there might be knowledge then. Memory.

I work very slowly. It's like building a ladder, where you're building your own ladder rung by rung, and you're climbing the ladder. It's not the best way to build a ladder, but I don't know any other way.

For politics is in its essence as Adams had said, the 'systematic organization of hatred': either you were organized or you were not.

Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.

My own way of writing is very meditated and, despite my reputation, rather slow-moving. So I do spend a good deal of time contemplating endings. The final ending is usually arrived at simply by intuition.

The mysteries of the female sex! We men can never hope to fathom your depths, but only try not to drown in them.