I keep thinking I'll enjoy suspense novels, and sometimes I do. I've read about 20 Dick Francis novels.

I wanted to apprentice myself to the dailiness of the war's beginning phase. It's truer and more frightening that way - when you're afloat on a little dingy in the midst of it all.

Some TV shows are like really good novels in that there are enough episodes that you start to have your own feelings about how the characters should act. When the scriptwriters go slightly wrong, when they make the character make a left turn that he or she wouldn't do, you know enough about the characters to say, "No, that's not what she would do there. That's wrong." You can actually argue with a TV show in a way that you can't do as much with movie - you inhabit a TV show in the way you inhabit a novel.

Wikipedia flourished partly because it was a shrine to altruism.

The job of the novel is to be true to the confusion, but not so confusing that you turn the reader off.

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

Spoon the sauce over the ice cream. It will harden. This is what you have been working for.