When he is sick, every man wants his mother.

I’m interested in what people do with the chaos in their lives and how they respond to it, and simultaneously what they do with what they feel like are limitations. If they push against these limitations, will they wind up in the realm of chaos, or will they push against limitations and wind up in the world of freedom?

a father for whom everything is an unshakable duty, for whom there is a right way and a wrong way and nothing in between, a father whose compound of ambitions, biases, and beliefs is so unruffled by careful thinking that he isn’t as easy to escape from as he seems. Limited men with limitless energy; men quick to be friendly and quick to be fed up; men for whom the most serious thing in life is to keep going despite everything. And we were their sons. It was our job to love them.

The hard part is, of course, the proximity of death. The number has no meaning as long as you're fit and healthy. But you know that you only have so much time left and you don't know how much it is. It could be a very short time.

I came to New York and in only hours, New York did what it does to people: awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out.

We live in an age in which the imagination of the novelist is helpless against what he knows he is going to read in tomorrow's newspaper.

Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.