I am nervous about dogmas of any kind, whether they be religious, political, or anti-religious. Too many heads have rolled because of them.

My own view of myself was that I was small and innocuous, a marshmallow compared to the others. I was a poor shot with a 22, for instance, and not very good with an ax. It took me a long time to figure out that the youngest in a family of dragons is still a dragon from the point of view of those who find dragons alarming.

Writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated deep down, by a fear or and fascination with mortality - by a desire to make the risky trip to the underworld and to bring something or someone back from the dead.

As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.

A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.

I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it.