Poetry is prose in slow motion.

Until a friend or relative has applied a particular proverb to your own life, or until you've watched him apply the proverb to his own life, it has no power to sway you.

E.B. White's essays are the best things I've read about Maine - especially the one in which he's not sure if he can go out sailing any more in his sloop.

When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry.

In the novel, I can change things and simplify, and make events work towards whatever meanings I'm trying to get at more efficiently.

Gandhi was such an important figure to the pacifists of the '30s, and he was such an extraordinary embodiment of nonviolence, that I thought it was necessary to have him in there. When he would say something about the war, it was to some extent news - and he was sure to have a response that was different from that of other world leaders.

I'm often called obsessive, but I don't think I am any more than anyone else.