Thank God for novelists. Thank God there are people willing to write everything down. Otherwise, so much would be forgotten.

It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?

It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead.

The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be the same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one: ETC.

There is this feeling that I have a destiny far away from the shallow and preposterous posing that is our life.

It's an astonishing skill that people can read, and read well. Very few people can read well. For instance, I have to be very careful with irony, saying something while meaning the exact opposite.

Well, it's practically over, thank God - I'm 83, there won't be that much more of it to put up with I don't think!