Even in New York, there are a lot of very attractive girls pedaling around. That just happens to be one of the nice sights in our city, seeing a young woman on a bike.

When I start, I have a feeling for the characters, and maybe the shape of the story. Sometimes I might even have the last sentence in mind. But, no book I've ever written has ever ended the way I thought it would. Characters disappear, others come forward. Once you start writing, everything changes.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

In general, lives seem to veer abruptly from one thing to another, to jostle and bump, to squirm. A person heads in one direction, turns sharply in mid-course, stalls, drifts, starts up again. Nothing is ever known, and inevitably we come to a place quite different from the one we set out for.

This is very rare for anyone in life to pursue something and that thing being the thing you actually most want to do. It's all about the inner, rather than the outer. Whether people like or don't like my work, read it or don't read it, it's just been a gift from the gods that I've been able to sit at my desk for the last almost 50 years and do the things I've wanted to do.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I'm talking about myself very directly.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people - more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true - in certain rare, isolated cases.