I'm in constant inner dialogue with my father still.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don't know what you're doing.

It's June second, he told himself. Try to remember that. This is New York, and tomorrow will be June third. If all goes well, the following day will be the fourth. But nothing is certain.

Each book I've done somehow finds its own unique form, a specific way it has to be written, and once I find it, I stick with it.

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.

I have difficulty orienting myself in space, and I'm probably one of the few people who gets lost in Manhattan.

Nobody asks you to do this. The world out there is not panting after another novelist. We choose it