Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.

Most of my friends' fathers had been in the war - either as soldiers or in some other capacity in the military. Whereas my father had not fought. He was older and he was in a business that was considered essential to the wartime effort - the wire business - and, of course, I was so young I didn't understand any of this.

It's extremely difficult to get these jobs because you can't get a job on a ship unless you have seaman's paper's, and you can't get seaman's papers unless you have a job on a ship. There had to be a way to break through the circle, and he was the one who arranged it for me.

I can never say 'why' about anything I do. I suppose I can say 'how' and 'when' and 'what.' But 'why' is impenetrable to me.

There is a double rhythm in all human beings. We are binary beings - two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears. Two legs for walking. And the heartbeat thumping in our chest mirrors that.

I'd go nuts. Because people look at the same passage and one person will say this is the best thing he's ever read, and another person will say it's absolutely idiotic. I mean, there's no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

I guess of all those novels, Don DeLillo's Falling Man is the one I like the best. I thought there were some beautiful things in that, particularly the relationship between the man who finds the briefcase and the woman whose husband owned the briefcase. It's quite a beautiful passage.