Research is about following the gleam into the dark. It's also about being sensitive enough to know which fact is "the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders," as opposed to the fact that deadens and kills a delicate new project.

Sex is a good starting point for everything.

In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.

Freedom or community, community or freedom. One must decide the way one wants to live. I chose community.

I love writing from enclosed spaces: you really learn about your characters when they have tight walls to push against.

My childhood was as conventional as you could get.

It seems to me that if you were to take almost any half-century in history, you'd find a grand societal tug-of-war between the community and the individual.