They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving.

People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.

Who but an English professor would threaten to kill a duck a day and hold up a goose as an example?

I looked back at some of my earlier published stories with genuine horror and remorse. I got thinking, How many extant copies might there be, who owns them, and do they keep their doors locked?

I get and read an enormous number of first novels.

I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other. And what kind of satisfactions they derive from it. And why there is always a cost, and a price to be paid.

By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.