I become an actor, a quick-change artist, as if I can trap the Prince of Truth in the act of switching a style.

Only another writer can know how much damage writing a novel can do to you. It's an unnatural activity to sit at a desk and squeeze words out of yourself.

The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world.

The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.

Everything wrong with America led to the point where the country built that tower of Babel, which consequently had to be destroyed. And then came the next shock. We had to realize that the people that did this were brilliant. It showed that the ego we could hold up until September 10 was inadequate.

Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by increasing armaments.

The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.