I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.

Writing has to do with truth-telling. When you're writing, let's say, an essay for a magazine, you try to tell the truth at every moment. You do your best to quote people accurately and get everything right. Writing a novel is a break from that: freedom. When you're writing a novel, you are in charge; you can beef things up.

There was a lot of maneuvering on the part of the Roosevelt administration to get the stars aligned so that that attack would happen. There's just no question about that; you don't even have to look at the decoding of diplomatic cables or anything else. FDR's own admiral thought it was a bad idea to have the fleet confined in one place way out in the middle of the Pacific.

The question any novel is really trying to answer is, Is life worth living?

You almost believe that you will never come to the end of a roll of tape; and when you do, there is a feeling, nearly, though very briefly, of shock and grief.

While I was writing I assumed it would be published under a pseudonym, and that liberated me: what I wrote was exactly what I wanted to read.

A bee rose up from a sun-filled paper cup, off to make slum honey from some diet root beer it had found inside.