Becoming a writer is not a 'career decision' like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don't choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

I've written books that have taken me fifteen years, from first sentence to last, and some that only take three or four months.

As long as a man had the courage to reject what society told him to do, he could live life on his own terms. To what end? To be free. But free to what end? To read books, to write books, to think.

Medical care for the entire country seems to me a basic right. If every other country in the West can do it, why can't we?

...once you fell in love with her, you loved her until the day you died.

What better portrait of a writer than to show a man who has been bewitched by books?

I know that what's happened in the election has changed American reality, and I understand that I have to change with it. I have to rethink how I live my life. I'm not a political essayist; I don't see that I would have any value cranking out articles for newspapers or magazines, because lots of people are doing that already.