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

Any workout which does not involve a certain minimum of danger or responsibility does not improve the body - it just wears it out.

The novelist ... must live in paranoia and seek to be one with the world; he must be terrified of experience and hungry for it; he must think himself nothing and believe he is superior to all.

The ultimate tendency of liberalism is vegetarianism.

The writer can grow as a person or he can shrink. ... His curiosity, his reaction to life must not diminish. The fatal thing is to shrink, to be interested in less, sympathetic to less, desiccating to the point where life itself loses its flavor, and one’s passion for human understanding changes to weariness and distaste.

There's nothing glorious about being a professional. . . . Professionalism probably comes down to being able to work on a bad day.

Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.